Simple ≠ easy

Drawing Nature

Hey all,

Welcome to Drawing Nature, the companion newsletter to Human Nature where I talk about my illustration process.

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Simple ≠ easy

The last couple of months have been particularly busy. I knew they would be, so I tried to make plans to reduce my Substack workload ahead of time.

I’d been wanting to simplify my illustrations for Human Nature for quite some time (aka from the very start). The idea was at first to make quick, spot-style illustrations. Especially since I’ve made so many full illustrations for the newsletter, I no longer felt the need to create new pieces for my portfolio; you can only have so many 4:3 pictures on a webpage.

So I decided to have a go at making spot illustrations for the developmental psychology series—no colour, just quick black and white pencil drawings. Turns out there was nothing quick about it.

When colour and background disappeared, composition and the black-to-white ratio became all the more important. I realised how much I relied on colour to make different elements stand out. When you’re working in black and white, there’s nowhere to hide. I had to redraw the same image many times.

While I was researching for the nature vs. nurture article, I came across Gregor Mendel who studied the inheritance patterns of peas. I then got obsessed with drawing a pea-child and spent the whole day writing the article around it.

So many Mendels, so many peas

I later ended up combining these two drawings