the collector

Hello! It’s Lea again.

I hope you had a great week. If you don’t know me, it's nice to meet you! This is Sunday Spreads, my personal illustration challenge. For this week. I wanted to focus on a habit I have had since childhood: I love to collect things. Especially things you might find on a walk in nature: leaves, flowers, seeds, rocks, shells, etc…

Here is the final spread, and you can read the process below:

Just looking into my camera roll on my phone, I have a lot of pictures of my hand holding something that I found beautiful at that moment.

And if the subject of my affection isn’t perishable, I tend to just stuff it in my pocket and take it home. This is how I end up with my desk drawers filled with smooth rocks, acorns, and dried ginko leaves. It’s a habit that really help me on a day to day basis. Living in a busy polluted city like Paris, I tend to join in the collective stress of work life, commute, and traffic surrounding me. But just by taking a small walk in a park on a lunch break, I always find the most extraordinary treasures. And I guess taking time to focus on how beautiful a leaf is makes you forget more stressful matters.

Anyway, this idea started on a doodle during a zoom call at work:

Can’t really tell what’s going on, but on the upper right corner is where I found the composition idea for this week’s illustration. I then did a first draft:

And then a 2nd one, refining…

And Finally painting directly on the rough for the final result:

Let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to reach out, I am always looking to connect with fellow artists & illustrators to share the joys and sorrows of creating pretty pictures from our heads.

Lea