They compose well into infographics, especially infographics involving cake.

This one is an extract from a larger drawing which documented a super excursion in Austria with a great group of work-friends.

And below is the earlier post which was a sketch that I made at work as a conservationist in a chalk gorge — an old quarry where thousands of wild orchids now grow under careful wilderness management.

Every year we count the orchids — yes, we actually do — as well as counting the bees, butterflies, glowworms, pond-life, and wildflowers.

The inspiration came from the blue umbrella, the blue light, the halo of the streetlights, and (out of frame of this shot) some lovely building façades.

However, when I reviewed this shot, I was delighted with the couple on the left-hand side of the street, specifically the serendipitously uplifted central foot, that suggested an effortless dance, “singing in the rain”, or a three-legged race at sports day.

The three-legged hound is cute too.

… and you can probably see that it looks like plasticine or play-dough. You might have also noticed that it looks like a fish bone or something.

With today’s missive, I wanted to highlight how you can be creative by fiddling with plasticine or play-dough.

In a post last month, I wrote about Indian elephants. I tried to sketch one from memory and was disappointed by how it looked (you can ignore the giant rabbit and giant mouse).

I searched up “elephant anatomy” and came across some super photos of a small Indian elephant on Jake’s Bones.

I decided to make a copy with the first thing that came to hand.

Elephants fascinate me because they look as if they are walking a high-wire sometimes.

I learnt, from Jake that: elephants walk on tiptoes; elephants leg bones go straight down; elephants walk by lifting fore- and aft-legs on one side off the floor at the same time.

Maybe that’s what captures my attention about how elephants move. Like Winnie-the-Pooh, the bulky abdomen enhances their charm.

In a forthcoming post, I’ll share how we can take this approach into another dimension. Are you excited to expand your creative comfort zone, as easily as putty in your hands? Then, please stay tuned for the next instalment in this series.

I think the key to drawing hands is observing each cylindrical section of the fingers, paying attention to their orientation in 3-dimensional space, and their level of tension, relative to each other.

Your practice with complex forms helps in other ways:

• Drawing people : young children walking, running, or leaping. A child has a very dynamic stance, and their limbs are not stiff and rigid even when still. Draw someone who is slouched or curled on a sofa chair.

• Elephants can have a surprising appearance of lightness of gait, not lessened by their trunk and tail.

• Illustrating a bed of wildflowers or a group of trees also requires careful observation and composition.

Even the blossoming crêpe myrtle, below, has a structure that somewhat resembles the human hand. It is crowned (gloved) with a tight crop of dark leaves and confetti-like flamingo-coloured blossom.

It would be a lovely tree to illustrate because in real life it attracts songbirds and wrens, which make for an attractive subject. Add some Indian elephants ridden by princes and princesses!

Trees which are open, letting light spill through them, are even harder to paint faithfully than hands, in my opinion. The shadow on the ground makes for an extra challenge.

The tree’s shadow can make for a great composition, creating depth and adding leading lines to the picture. Dappled light in the shadows can add areas of visual interest as a kind of negative counterbalance to positive areas like confetti blossom or wildflower heads.

Illustration really zings when line and form balances texture and contrast. So always look for the hard and soft edges.

Drawing trees, with open structure like jacarandas (not pictured), and these pink lemonade trees/shrubs (staghorn sumac)* and willow below, is a lot of fun, don’t you think?

* actually not sure if those are staghorn sumac. Could they be ash trees? Neither make sense to me because this garden is on the edge of a river flood plain. I’ll try to find out from the owner of the garden. Does anyone care to make an educated guess?

I call this style “cheesecake illustration”, and it’s a favourite style of mine to share a capsule of feeling about a place.

I took a photo of a “Wall” — the butterfly from an earlier post — and superimposed it onto an illustration of a chalk gorge.

Not sure if butterflies like cheesecake. What do you think?

I will work on this a bit more, because I would like to share it as a paper-cutting hobby project.