Lovers in The Garden

In The Garden was a personal project inspired by the artwork A Thorn amidst the Roses done by James Sant in 1887. I stumbled across the painting on the internet and wanted to recreate it with my own personal twist.

Date Created: June 3, 2022

Tracked Time: 16 hours 28 minutes

View Illustration Process Below

Sketch

I started out with a rough sketch and used the original painting as my reference picture. I drew both women but very differently from the painting since I wanted it to have a resemblance but not look exact. I used crosshatching to shade in shaded areas. I framed plants around their heads to create a feeling of a garden surrounding them. The original painting is called A Thorn amidst the Roses because one woman has pricked herself with a thorn and the other is removing the thorn. Though, with my piece, one woman is holding a butterfly in her hand and carefully trying to put it in the other woman’s palm.

Refined Illustration

Then, I refined my sketch lines. I thickened the lines to add more depth and shadows within the piece. I made the background of the piece a pastel pink at first as I thought that it would be the base for my color palette, but that changed.

Refined sketch with cleaner lines of two close women in a garden admiring a butterfly in one's hand. A pink background is added.

Final Product

Next, I struggled with a color palette for this piece but I landed on hues of purple. I also added flowers to the hair of the woman on the right as well as a butterfly hair clip to match the butterfly in the other woman’s palm. A bee was also added to the mix of insects in the piece as it perches on the finger of one of the women. Small details were added to finish the piece off such as adding tiny tattoos which touch on the personality of each subject, rings on their fingers, accessories in their hair, piercing jewelry, white highlights, and shadows. Lastly, as always, I added a rough texture overlay over the entire piece.