November and December 2025 Sketches, Studies, and Drawings

It's been awhile and I decided to do a little sketching in a new sketchbook gifted to me by Aarti.  Being so used to doing this on the ipad, I kept wanting to hit the undo button from time to time that doesn't exist.....lol.

And back to sketching and drawing on the ipad:

Inspiration from Birthday Flowers

I've been on a roll with drawing after the flowers the guys sent me for my birthday.  Although I've worked on a few other things besides flowers (not shown in this post), it was those arrangements that inspired and motivated me.

The last drawing in this post is a banana plant that has come back up in our back yard.

 

Roses for my Birthday

This year, I received two beautiful bouquets of flowers for my birthday.  A great incentive for me to draw.  To start out, I decided to focus on the roses in one of the flower arrangements.

Although I'm calling this basically finished, there are various things I could improve on.  One being the lighting.  Unfortunately, I work with what I have with the normal lighting in my house without "staging" for lighting effects.  Not showing here, I am still playing with backgrounds of different methods and colors.  

As I was working on this, I considered adding other flowers as fillers around the roses (like what are in the arrangements) but chose not to.  

Last count on number of layers is 55 but that also includes screenshots of the stages for sharing the steps like this as well as multiple layers for each component with base colors, lights, and darks, etc.  Anymore, I also add layers for notes so I can remember just what I did throughout.  Before I would keep notes on paper and then misplace them.  When I was blogging on a regular basis, I would use my blog describing everything to remind me but then this year I haven't been real on top of things.

2025 Sketches/Drawings to Date

Bringing things up to date since my last post.  

The following includes some digital journaling along with a few portraits.  

The bird drawing is of a Painted Bunting seen outside our living room window.  

Portraits include my nephew's daughter, self portrait, sister-in-law, and a 6 month old Maine Coon kitten my youngest son and daughter-in-law have.

All worked using iPad and Procreate.

Flower Drawings

After a bit of a break or what I refer to as a recharge period, I  worked these flower sketches.  I've been in the mood to work my drawings in black and white and then go back adding color.

This first one was originally sketched in my Alpha sketchbook using a mechanical pencil.  From there I uploaded to my iPad and ended up with the following by using the pencil sketch and blending out using the Gouache brush tool.

Using the same flower arrangement, I then worked this next drawing adding a little artificial bird I have perched on one of the branches.  

We've been seeing more bees IN the house here lately.  Both mud daubers and these little wasps.  In fact in the kitchen you can hear buzzing from the back wall.  Terry believes they must have a nest just under the edge of the roof (I believe what's called a soffit but not sure on that).

I decided to work some sketches I could use to add to other drawings.

And most recent is another of our Hibiscus that is in the back yard.  

Playing with backgrounds.  Not sure which I like better....the green or the blue.