For some context about these pieces, please check out my post I made a plant-themed cipher. Long story short, I made up a cipher and based it on leaves and plants. These pieces are made using said cipher and start with piece #7, as the first 6 pieces were shown off in my first post about the cipher (along with how it all works).
Some of the pieces below are experimental, some have deeper meanings, one just serves the purpose of getting used to using the cipher again, and some are just meant to look pretty (I’ll let you judge which ones they are). Anyway, let’s get onto the pieces, shall we?
The pieces:
#7 – A line from Violet’s tale:
Violet was a silent girl
This piece was inspired by the song Violet’s tale. This song follows the character of Violet throughout her life and is a tale of violence and abuse, ending with her death and the birth of her children.
For this piece, I wanted to try and use a more realistic style and also try including a flower – in this case, a violet. This violet covers a pair of lips in order to represent the character’s silence through the majority of the song. The lips themselves are damaged to hint at the abuse the character suffers. The leaf shape used is also taken from the violet plant.
As previously stated, I tried using a more realistic style for this piece and I think it worked quite well. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely wasn’t aiming for realism (I am not that talented). I also wanted try using leaves on only one side of the plant, just to see what it would look like, and I think that also worked well for this piece.
#8 – Some kinda scuffed train doodles:
Test
Magpie poem
Screaming child
This one isn’t really that deep. I was one the train and decided to have a doodle on somethings that I had picked up on my journey. I first tested whether I how well I could draw on a train ticket (which I accidentally smudged). I had been thinking about the Magpie poem during the trip and decided to write that down on a collection receipt (which I also accidentally smudged). And, lastly, there was a screaming child on the train, hence the drawing on the Google review thing.
As I said, this one is not that deep. I hadn’t used my cipher in a couple of months and decided to doodle on some scrap paper with a random pen I found in my handbag. I also ran out of tape.
#9 – The last verse of Mademoiselle Noir:
But the lady was no demon, she was a lonely soul,
Just like in that book they once read,
Still waiting for her prince while her hair was on fire,
Then one last time she said.
I absolutely love the song Madamoiselle Noir by Peppina! And, naturally, this love inspired me to do some art. I’ve kinda of spoilt how the story ends with this piece, but I highly recommend that you listen to the song regardless.
It’s quite a simple piece, using just biros and felt tips, but I think that it is rather effective. I wanted to go for a bit more of a natural setting with this one – as if the plant came from around the tower where mademoiselle Noir lived and had caught alight in the chaos of her hair being set on fire. The leaves are green where they have remained untouched but are black, like the mademoiselle’s hair, where aflame. I think it ends up being quite a cohesive piece (despite floating in a white void).
Also, fun fact – the word ‘fire’ isn’t actually on fire in this piece. This was unintentional…but quite funny.
#10 – A line from Pareidolia:
My sweet pareidolia
This one was an experiment more than anything, so there’s no symbolism or deeper meanings to this one. I simply wanted to see if I could try using a different medium for my cipher. I chose some random colours and kept the design quite simple (so no berries or extra bits).
I used 4 different stitches when embroidering this piece:
- Fishbone stitch – Used for the leaves.
- Running stitch – Used on top of the leaves in order to create the leaf lines.
- Back stitch – Used for the thinner stems that connect to the leaves.
- Satin stitch – Used for the thicker part at the bottom of the main stem.
I think that this turned out pretty good for a first attempt. It’s not the most polished thing in the world, but I hadn’t done any embroidery in a while. I definitely want to do some more embroidered pieces in the future.
#11 – Testing some new pens:
My face fucking hurts!
…but I got new pens.
This one is pretty self-explanitory. I got new pens, which I wanted to test out, and my face was hurting that day. I still don’t 100% know why my face was hurting…but I have my suspicions.
Anyway, onto the piece itself. I decided to play around with gradients for this one. I split the colours of my new pens into 2 and did one gradient down the plant and one across the outside. There’s not really much else to say about this piece…other than you can tell where I kind of ran out of space on the left.
#12 – Every month – without fail:
I keep forgetting to pay my council tax. Oops…
Yes, in spite of what the title of this piece may have alluded to, this piece is about my council tax payments. I do pay my council tax, I have never missed a month, but I do seem to always initially forget to pay it. I usually and up making the payment 1+ weeks into the month…but I do always pay it!
Anyway, I just had a bit of fun with this one. I wanted to make it very spindly and winding, just to see what it would look like. I think it ended up looking quite pretty, really, even if it is a little bit tricky to follow. Overall, quite a simple idea that was executed fairly well.
#13 – Good omens fan art:
“I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing.”
“Oh, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”
A lot of thought was put into this piece and I absolutely love how it turned out – it is one of my favourites so far! I think that I managed to represent the characters really well, both with the colour schemes used and with how the plants are shaped. If you hadn’t spotted it already, this is an interaction that Aziraphale and Crowley had in the first episode, specifically the bit where they are first chatting on the wall after Aziraphale gave away his flaming sword.
Crowley’s plant was the easiest of the 2 plants to figure out. He has a very easy colour scheme – black to represent his clothes, red to represent his hair, and yellow to represent his eyes. I found Aziraphale’s a bit more tricky to figure out, though, as his character has a lot of colours that are similar to one another. In the end, I ended up basing my colours on just his clothes – medium brown to represent the darker elements (such as his waistcoat and shoes), light brown to represent the lighter elements (such as his blazer), and blue to represent his accent colour (in his modern day appearance, his shirt).
I also tried to get across some other character details aside from their general colour schemes. Crowley’s plant is sort of coiled and wiggly in order to shown off his more relaxed posture and his loose swagger when he walks. By comparison, Aziraphale’s plant in a lot more rigid and stiff to show off his regimented posture and style of walking. The berries on Aziraphale’s plant are also straight to help represent this, and also have the bonus quality of kind of looking like a bowtie (in my opinion, anyway). The berries on Crowley’s plant are lopsided to show of his almost constantly lopsided way of standing.
Both plants also have a little, less subtle, attribute to indicate which plant belongs to which character – Aziraphale’s plant has a halo and Crowley’s has a little devil’s tail. The plants are also arranged into a heart shape and are intertwined to show the nature of their relationship (love, romantic or otherwise). The last little detail that I would like to mention is the fact that the leaf shape is the same across the 2 plants, as (according to the lore of the show) the 2 characters are fundamentally the same.
Oh, and one more thing; there was actually a little bit of an experimental element to this piece. The leaves in the bottom part of the piece, where the plants intertwine, overlap with the backmost leaves being completely blank. As they say the same thing at that part of their respective quotes, I decided to try and imply that instead of making the bottom half of the piece unnecessarily busy by cramming in the leaves in an attempt to make them all visible and legible.
#14 – Violina mia bridge:
Mesto melodia,
Violina mia.
This was my first attempt at using my cipher for a language other than English. I decided to try something in another European language for my first attempt, as a lot of the phonemes would be similar to that of English. So, this piece is in Italian.
This one was kept simple as I don’t really know anything about the Italian language or how their grammar works…In order to figure out which phonemes I should use, I listened to this part of song over and over again to see how it sounded. It was a bit of challenge, but that’s not a bad thing.
I also tried using washi tape for the leaves and I really like how it turned out. Simple, yet effective (and, hopefully, understandable).
#15 – Shit coffee quandary:
I am desperately trying to think of ways to use up this really shitty coffee that I bought off Amazon…Help. I can’t drink it – it tastes so bad and smells like burning plastic!
Another self-explanatory one, I think. I’ll admit, this isn’t my favourite piece in the world, but I just wanted to make use of the awful coffee that I bought. So, I tried painting with it. The leaves and background swipes have been painted using the titular coffee and everything else is done in black and brown biro.
I just had a bit of a play with this one really, with all of the swirls bordering the piece and smoky-looking stem. These were also the smallest leaves that I had worked with up until this point and, I think, that everything is still pretty legible (even on the more crowded leaves).
#16 – Some absolute bops:
…I was never going to put a quote under this one; there is simply too much on this page. If you want to know exactly what’s written on this page, you’re going to have to figure it out yourself.
This piece was somewhat spurred on by the previous one as, having successfully drawn my smallest leaves to date, I wanted to see just how much information that I could cram onto a page and just how small my leaves could be. I had to buy some new pens in order to achieve this – some fine liners with tips 0.15mm in diameter. They worked quite well for this piece. I also decided to experiment with a bunch of different leaf shapes in this one, as I felt that I had been sticking to the same sort of shapes for a while and wanted to mix it up a bit.
To help you try and figure out what this says, I will tell you that is consists of, primarily, songs from my ‘Absolute bops’ playlist on my bandcamp. My music taste is somewhat eclectic…so good luck. I did try and have each plant have colours relating to the song’s respective album covers, but I don’t think that I got some of them quite right (so that fact might not be much help).
I did make a couple of mistakes in this piece (see the black splotches on some of the leaves), but that was due to leaving the piece for a while, coming back to it, and then being a bit rusty.
#17 – ULTRAKILL dev. quote:
Culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it.
This piece is one of the more experimental ones, and isn’t the prettiest, but I absolutely adore the quote! This one was made just after I had been doing something with resin. The leaves are little resin blobs (made on top of the lid to one of my moulds), the leaf lines and stem were done using a paint maker, and the base/pot comes from a newly-opened box of rubber gloves (hence the perforation).
I just wanted to see whether or not I could make leaves using resin, as I had had some left over after making whatever I had been making. It worked, and I would be open to trying resin leaves again, but I might make and effort to shape them more next time – whether I cast the resin into something or cut it when it is partially cured (not sticky, but malleable).
Fun fact, I had been seeing a lot of Arcane content popping up around the time I made this piece. I truly don’t know if that influence the colour choices or not…but it seems like in might have.
#18 – Chorus of Fall asleep in a nuclear war:
When you die asleep your dreams will
Keep on going
When you die awake
You just die
When you die asleep your dreams will
Keep on going
When you die awake
You just die
Die
Die
And, finally, the last piece of this post, and another one based on a song. It has a few different elements to it – A background made of washi tape, leaf lines and background plants drawn in dark blue biro, and foreground plants (sans leaf lines) backstitched in variegated blue thread. In order to achieve the latter, I reinforce the back of the page with some thick-ish sketchbook book paper. Otherwise, the page would have torn apart when trying to stitch in.
I have mixed feelings about this piece. I like for the colour palette used, the well-aligned washi tape, and the very uniform backstitch. However, I don’t like the that fact that I ended up sacrificing some of the piece’s legibility, both with the thread choice and how a chose to arrange the plants. It’s pretty, sure, but I find it quite tricky to follow.
Like with my Good omens piece, I used blank background leaves to show duplicated parts. It works well for the piece aesthetically, but I, again, ended up sacrificing a bit of the piece’s legibility. Additionally, there is a mistake in this piece, specifically involving the the ‘dreams’ leaves. While the front leaf if plural, the back leaf is (accidentally) singular.
Still, I think the piece looks nice, and I find that it fits the slightly ethereal quality of the singer’s voice quite well.
So, how did you like the latest update of my odd, plant-based fascination? I want to experiment and play around even more with this cipher – I’m really having fun with it. At the moment, I have kept all of my notes and pieces for the cipher to one book and it is starting pretty chunky (as all good art books should be). I have already completed my next piece, but I can’t add it to this post. It’s a bit too…complicated for that, but I will explain and go through it in my next plant cipher post (I promise). I have some ideas for other, and perhaps larger, pieces outside of the book, but I don’t think that they will happen for a while yet. Somethings to look forwards to, aye?
Right, anyway, song time – Leaves in the stream – Aurelio Voltaire
…sorry, I just couldn’t resist the pun. Sue me.
Natalie's notebook 