Weekly WrapUp Silk, Doodles, Hothouse Florals

Welcome

On most Wednesdays, check this blog for a strategy, process, or reflection for illustration with the iPad app ProCreate or Affinity Designer. This week, in fact this month, will be short on art and filled with poetry; I’ve finished one pattern a challenge, a doodle anniversary card, and silk painting.

Creative Journey Community

My friend and mentor, Jennifer Nichols, hosts a Creative Journey Procreate Community filled with live lessons, recorded lessons, and a supportive community. Click the link for Creative Journey [affiliate link] to find out more. Two of my art pieces this week are from Jenn’s classes, Doodle Rewards and Dragonfly Silk Painting.

Doodle Rewards

Doodle with watercolor and micron pen -- became an anniversary card

Several of Jenn’s classes include doodling, just for fun, free-drawing with ink, micron, watercolor with lots of examples and styles. I needed a break time and started this doodle. I realized my son and daughter-in-law have an anniversary this week, so the little doodle will be their card. It was a relaxing reward — fun drawing and something to give away. Awesome.

Dragonfly Silk Painting

Dragonflies on the Pond digital silk painting on Zazzle

I placed these pieces on Zazzle and ordered them for myself, though I’m thinking my granddaughter might like them. Jennifer Nichols has two classes on silk painting. This is her more recent and less complicated.

I followed this less complicated class, but then added in a bit from the original silk painting class that I loved — that the lines don’t meet at right angles, but rather curve. I made sure each line “curved” in both directions to the line or edge it touched.

This style, silk painting, is one of my favorites, and I’ve created many. You can find thirty-four of them on Flickr: Silk Painting. This class alone is worth joining Jennifer’s community.

Hothouse Florals, Completed

If you read last week’s WrapUp, you’d know I had revising to complete. I completely changed two of stem areas on the pattern so they did not look “dangling” and so they filled in the floral aspect. I also realized that the texture pattern I created was not a repeating pattern, so I revised the square pattern into the rectangular repeat pattern. This was another template from Jennifer’s community. Lots of freebies there.

I’ve yet to add it to the Spoonflower Hothouse Florals Design Challenge, but I did put the pink, green, and almond Hothouse Floral designs on RedBubble so I could purchase notebooks I need — one each of pink, green, and almond. I hope you take a look.

Poetry

I continue to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month and National Poetry Writing Month.

My favorite one this week is a haibun— a prose narrative followed by a summarizing haiku. It’s about rabbits and the antelope bitterbrush shrub in our area. The blog post provides more info, including a movie.

I hope these poems, simple as they are, written from the heart and often not true to form or poetic quality, inspire you to start writing down your own nature studies, or heartfelt realities.

Here’s the link to the NaPoWriMo26 Flickr Album and the NaPoWriMo 2026 tagged blog posts.