Sunday Spread Week 16: Monstera Deliciosa

“Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them - waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things.” - Hayao Miyazaki

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 weekly personal illustration challenge. Last week, I started experimenting a little bit with collage. I made a big binder folder with paint textures to cut away from. It’s been a great distraction away from screens and my buzzing phone.

Since staring my newsletter here on Substack, I’ve been able to challenge the way I make images and make a small project each week. I’ve found that the best way for me to test a new medium was to make a mini-zine, a little story held on a single sheet of A4 paper.

The story came from a spontaneous visit at the green houses of the Jardin des Plantes with my partner last weekend. The Green Houses are unfortunately partly closed for renovations but the Main house is warm, with tropical climate and features beautiful Monsteras ( or Swiss cheese plant.)

I have always loved these plants for their aesthetic leaves, and they are also surprisingly easy to take care of and can become your life long companion. These Monsteras are probably hundred of years old, and the tropical climate is perfect for them to grow really tall, like this one I spotted in Mumbai, in the IIT University Campus, crawling all the way up the Animation and Design building.

But they can also thrive at a much slower rate in colder climates. I got mine back in 2018 for £5 on a plant stand in Dalston Market in London. It was tinyyyy. ( I’m really bad at taking pictures of the things that matter in my life so I don’t have pictures of my baby plant. But I drew it instead. )

She accompanied me to all the major changes of my life, from moving back to Paris ( she travelled in my lap in the Eurostar) to Covid and moving in with my partner. Many leaves and roots later, she is a tall beautiful plant of 8 years old and I cannot wait to see how she will look like in 10, 20 years.

If you’re looking for a plant friend, look no further, and I even made you a little care guide.

To talk a little bit about the process, here was the rough on printer paper:

And I then started the collage on better, heavier paper.

And I used the light table for composition help, but I mostly composed and design directly on the collage it self. I scanned it, recomposed it a bit in Procreate and added text.

Here it is fresh from the scanner, and here is the final file with text:

I have to say the final CMYK print of the zine isn’t as vivid as the original collage, but I might need to learn a bit more on how to manage colors for prints:

If you would like to print it at home, you can find the file here

Anyways, 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.

See you next week !

Lea