Plants are the cheap part

I still love that I get to draw for part of my job. Having grown up with the notion that drawing was fairly useless and not a viable career, I of course steered myself in other directions and did not strenuously pursue drawing seriously. I regret that! I mean.. look around, how is it possible to think that drawing is not a thing of value? Everything you look at was most likely drawn by someone at some point in its development. aaaannnnywhooooo… I’m not bitter or anything.

Image of my messy and colorful desk covers in books about plants, drawings, and markers. there is also a tiny cat paw in the upper left.

Plants are almost the last thing to go in and everyone has sticker shock at that point. “Can we reduce the number of plants”? Yea, I guess you could. But why? You will just be disappointed with how sparse your landscape looks!

Here is what your hellstrip will look like with jut the ground covers.

Here is what it will look like with some flowering yet easy care shrubs and some boulders and cobbles. Do it!

Yellow in My Sketchbook

Just drawing yellow things in my landscape sketchbook. I’m being a bit lazy and not scanning or color correcting the images… these are just iPhone shots!

Another made up landscape plan

In this one I was actually imagining this in my front yard in the bed by the driveway. In reality, the front yard planted with natives but this was one of my earlier imaginings.

I get obsessed with certain color combos. This one I’m looking at silver foliage and peach flowers.

Landscape Sketchbook - Vignettes

I like to do little landscape vignettes. Not a whole landscape design but just a bed or a small area. It’s fun to use these informal, made-up sketches to explore color and texture and layering of plants.

Here is one with lots of maroon, red, orange, and yellow plants.

Another one with some red and adding in some boulders and gravel, IDK, I find drawing these fun and soothing!

Landscape Sketchbook - Blobs of Color

I was just playing around with color in this sketch. I really love seeing a landscape where there is super bright color introduced. So far I have not really had a chance to get a client to do this. I have certainly suggested it and tried! I really have! I just love a bright contrast and pop of color!

Landscape Sketchbook - Plan View

I came to landscape design through drafting and design, not through plants or gardening. When I first started landscape design classes I seriously did not know a single plant. LOL. One of the first classes I took was planting design for some reason. It was kinda hard since I knew absolutely zero about plants. :D

But I looooved hand drafting so much. It’s one of those activities where I can really get into a flow state. I like CAD drafting as well but it is not nearly as soothing.

I like to doodle these plan view symbols. Would it be weird to get some of these tattooed on myself?! No, no it would not be weird.

colorful plan view plant symbols

colorful plan view plant symbols

My Current Mental Landscape

My bubble diagram of my mental landscape. I think I was in a bit of a depressive episode when I drew this one. I should redraw this now and then to see how things change. Because, if nothing else, we know that landscapes change over time.

What would yours look like?

Sketchbook

watercolor painting in a sketchbook of a Clanculus margaritarius

Lami Safari Fountain Pens

I’m really enjoying sketching with my Lamy Safari pens. I’m most worried about upkeep for them, though. They need to be cleaned regularly and I am not great at that kind of thing. Right now I amusing Noodler’s Ink Black with the special refillable cartridges. Why do they come with non-water resistant blue ink? No one wants that!

Landscape Sketchbook - Containers

Turquoise pots are just lovely aren’t they? I bought this one at Pottery and Beyond in Emeryville.

An historic earthquake shake in SF

in 1906 the earthquake that burned down SF left many people homeless. Tiny ‘earthquake shacks’ were built to house people quickly. There are not that many of them left in SF but my sister happens to live in one of them!

I drew it from Google maps and I will frame it and give it to her for her birthday. I had such fun drawing and painting this!

Some Drawings

I just thought I would post some of the various painting and drawing I have been doing. Some of it is work related and some is not!

Green and gold watercolor swatches.

I did this quick visualization for a client recently. We want to remove this lawn, a little privacy fence (not too overwhelming) and some interesting colorful plants.

Okay, so I also took this irrigation class through the Zone 7 Water Agency. the class was taught by Lori Palmquist, who is an irrigation WIZARD. She’s a good speaker and a good teacher. I may also have accosted her about some APLD stuff and she was like WhoTF are you?!? LOL. No worries, Lady, I’m just a stranger asking you for access to this website you used to work on. Don’t mind me! Anyway, here is an illustration of an irrigation manifold. As you can see, I am an excellent student who does not struggle to pay attention.

I should be learning about what these things are and do but instead I am drawing them. Don’t come at me, I have ADHD.

We had a little field trip to Drake’s Beach and I did a quick vignette.

Some other sketchy doodles for work:

Neighborhood sketchbook

Snapped a picture of a Tibouchina urvilleana on a neighborhood walk and then decided to sketch it. I love the look of the dark river rock and the fallen purple petals.

Visualizing with SketchUp

Still thinking about visualizing. I do like 3D scenes in SketchUp. It’s nice to have a but of that realistic texturing and the rendered shadows are super nice as well. In my own hand drawings I tend to not put those dramatic shadows in because I worry about ruining the drawing. :D

I think one of my annoyances with SketchUp is just have to do with finding the right plant objects to use. If a picture looks fairly realistic the plants need to be pretty darn close the actual plant being spec’ed in the plan otherwise homeowners get confused. With a hand-drawing you can just be like, “oh yeah, this is an artistic rendition”.

Again, these are not my design they are from the wonderful Susan at Garden Alchemy.

Oh, yeah, I also created that metal hoop sculpture you see in the photos in SketchUp and you can find it in the 3D Warehouse and use it if you want to!

Visualizing Designs

I’m imagining that everyone has their own work flow for creating client visuals. I love 3D and, in fact, have a degree in 3D Animation and Computer Modeling (or something along those lines… it’s been a long time). Making 3D renderings look good is fairly time consuming and I often don’t love the final product. The time consuming part is what is important here though, I’m not sure your small to mid sized residential projects will want to pay for that time. The GOAL of these visuals is to help the client imagine their space and maybe it doesn’t have to super elaborate and 100% perfect and I need to remember that.

Right now I am using SketchUp. It’s good enough but I do still love that hand-drawn look. Lately I have been rendering a line drawing in SketchUp and then coloring over it. Here is an uncolored example.

Firepit with shrubs

Same view but with different plants and chairs.

And a color example. The color on this scan came out a tad weird but you can see how I go about making a test drawing and trying out markers.

I print out several and then us AD Markers to color. I do love to color!

My current process:

Create basic SketchUp model and use one of the sketch filters. Create several views and print them out.

Draw in the plants - sometimes I draw directly on to the print out and sometimes I do a more elaborate dance with tracing paper, rescanning, color adjusting in Photoshop but honestly that takes way longer.

Choose a coloring medium - I have been using AD Markers lately but sometimes I use colored pencils. I would love to do watercolor. One of the joys of watercolor is how fast and blendable they are. I have not really worked out HOW to do this yet though. I don’t think my printer will work even wth the flimsiest watercolor paper. I could trace the drawing on but haven’t tried that yet. Something to work on, I guess!

Then scan, color correct, and done!

I don’t have my own clients yet but I get to color other peoples designs and I freaking love it.

The above landscape designs are by Susan of Garden Alchemy.