Back in 2020 I started my journey of digital drawing on my brand new Ipad using the Procreate app. It was a challenge for me, since I’ve never drawn digitally before in any other way than creating vector illustration in Adobe Illustrator. My approach to richly textured illustration was strictly analog and I preferred either colour pencils or watercolour technique to any other. During my student years I experimented with various media, but these were the ones I always felt most comfortable in.
As I was trying to evolve my digital drawing skill I therefore naturally leaned towards digital brushes with unpolished, heavily textured character. The allure of traditional techniques remained unmatched and I really tried not to fall into the category of “polished Ipad art” – a phrase I use for the polished, “air-brushy”, smoothened-out look, that actually is pretty difficult to avoid while drawing digitally. It takes a lot of practice to get final results with valuable little imperfections. They are, in my opinion, the key to truly realistic look.
I recently decided on a little creative project to redraw a colour pencil illustration of a red clover in Procreate, aiming to maintain the charm, characteristics, and texture of the original piece. The latter was in fact a little sketch I made back in high school on a meadow during a vineyard harvest in October 2015. I used some Faber-Castell pencils (they remain my favourite) and sat in the grass, holding the precious red clover in my hand. Redrawing this same clover 8 years later actually actually made me think about how this particular clover is long gone, but somehow got “lucky” to be noticed and frozen in time in a form of illustration. Thinking about all of that made me want to capture its intricate textures even more faithfully and precisely.
My process began by scanning the original illustration, with a good quality scanner preserving every nuance and stroke. I then carefully recreated the red clover’s delicate petals and distinctive leaves, establishing a colour palette that mirrored the original. By selecting brushes that replicated the grainy texture of colour pencils, I ensured that each stroke on the digital canvas maintained the organic, hand-drawn appeal. Like I mentioned before, the polished look was not my goal, and wherever it came to look a little too “clean”, I added some grainier detail. The scanned image actually contained some accidental grains of colour in various places – apparently some tiny bits of colour pencil flew all over the place as I was drawing in the grass and enthusiastically colouring in the various shapes. Initially in my redrawing I actually erased them, but I later noticed how essential they were to the texture. I ended up emphasising them and even adding some more of these little “mistakes” to enhance the graininess of the image.
The result was a blend of old and new, where the charm of colour pencils met the versatility of digital art. Redrawing the red clover illustration in Procreate allowed me to showcase the beauty of nature while preserving the timeless techniques that make color pencil illustrations so captivating. The project served as a delightful reminder that innovation can coexist with tradition, breathing new life into our creative past.
