Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating everyday objects
My sketchbooks (and possibly even more so, my notebooks, as I HAVE TO doodle while planning, listening and so on) are full of quick little sketches of mugs (lots of mugs, to be honest) and lamps, and pens and scissors. (They’re also full of flowers and weird and quirky faces and folk-art style kinda symmetrical patterns. I should maybe do a whole blog posts on sketchbook, notebook and random post-it doodles.)
If in doubt, just draw what’s in front of you. To I almost always have a huge list of ideas of things I want to draw or sketches I’ve done that can be worked up to final – not to mention actual client work with specific things to draw. But there are still times when I’ll sit in a café or on a park bench and pull out my sketchbook and not know what to draw, but want to draw something. And there is literally ALWAYS something there to draw, so we can never really have the excuse of not knowing what to draw, can we?
I think I probably claim a lot of things are my favourite thing to draw, but I definitely have an overriding joy of documenting the everyday. That can be documenting emotions and scenes, but it is often just capturing the handful of things I can see on a shelf or the random collection of junk sitting in the corner, or the bits and pieces sat on top of the cupboard… Oh!! I knew there was a reason to be a cluttered, not overly tidy person! Because I do think it’s generally far more interesting to draw a busy and cluttered space than a clear and clean shelf with nothing askew at all.
Sketchbook glimpses of everyday objects
Here are a handful of sketches and doodles of everyday objects from flicking through some of my sketchbooks and notebooks and the piles of post-its on my desk (yes, it’s a messy cluttered desk, obviously… even when I tidy it, it will still be pretty cluttered).
Drawing challenges
I do (start, at least) a lot of drawing challenges, whether ones I make up for myself, ones that stem from a class or membership I’m part of, or just big global Instagram challenges. I’ve found I’m most happy to do ones that last around a month, as I get bored if I try to go up to 100 days. Quick-draw daily challenges are great for a bunch of things – practising something you’re rusty at drawing, leaning into a new style direction, or just flexing your muscles in a different way to the client work you’re working on.
Last year, I did a lot of A to Z challenges, including an A to Z of Everyday Life, and an A to Z of Household Objects (didn’t finish that one because I had client work that required some long hours).
I also did around a month where I drew a particular subject matter on different days of the week (and one day was objects).
Illustrating everyday objects within scenes
The sketching and doodling and the drawing challenges all feed into final illustrations, whether personal work or client work. Including those little details in room illustrations, like a glass of water, pair of glasses or inhaler, or putting stuff on shelves in the background of illustrations of people interacting or doing things, makes all the difference, I think. And the inclusion of everyday objects can make illustrations more relatable and also tell a story.
Here are a few where you can see a variety of everyday objects.
List of things to draw
It’s really handy to have a list somewhere (on your phone is probably easiest?) of everyday objects to draw, so you’re not always limited to what’s in front of you. Most of them you should probably be able to draw from memory, but you can always look up some references if you need to. Here’s a short list of ideas you can use if you like – or come up with your own list. There are 31, so you can use if for a month-long challenge if you want to.
31 everyday objects to draw
And here they are in text, so you can copy and paste them if you like.
- Mug
- Teaspoon
- Bar of soap
- Shampoo bottle
- Whisk
- Kettle
- Pair of scissors
- Headphones
- Mobile phone
- Sketchbook
- Sandal
- Broom
- Trowel
- Clothes peg
- Washing powder (or liquid or sheets)
- Microwave
- Watering can
- Toilet brush
- Hairbrush
- Toothbrush
- Washing-up brush
- Pencil sharpener
- Lanyard
- Teapot
- House key
- Spanner
- Measuring tape
- Bottle of sanitiser
- Face mask
- Nail varnish
- Purse
Lifestyle illustrator: Illustrating rooms
I think drawing rooms has become one of my absolute favourites. (Though I realise I probably say that about a lot of things, and my favourite may change depending on what I’m doing the most of at any one time – usually the thing I’m in the thick of is the thing I feel happiest about, but occasionally, if I’ve agreed to draw something that maybe isn’t really ‘me’ I might be feeling it’s the least favourite.)
My love of drawing rooms goes way back to when I was a kid of seven or eight years (I know this because I remember it being after moving house, which we did when I was seven, and before we went to live in Spain for a year, which we did when I was nine). I spent hours drawing bathrooms. Every piece of paper I could get my hands on – including the backs of envelopes and cereal boxes – I drew bathrooms. They frequently had naked women in them too – I assume because you do usually have to take your clothes off in a bathroom, not for any other nefarious reasons! I also remember that I would almost always include a shower in these bathrooms, even though we only had a bath in our bathroom, because I loved showers and really wanted one. (I do have one now, thankfully, and am very very grateful for it, because it is responsible for making me feel awake and ready to face the day.)
Illustrated bathrooms
So, no surprise that I have drawn a fair few bathrooms (and showers, and toilets…) Anyone out there looking for an illustrator to create a book of bathroom illustrations? I’m sure there’s a nice market for that somewhere.
Illustrated living rooms
The living room can be a real window into the soul of a family. And I love adding in lots of little details that give clues to the family who hangs out in my living room illustrations. You may notice that my rooms are all fairly maximalist. And anyone who’s been to our house will not be surprised about that! That said, I do tend to draw rooms that have a bit more of an organised maximalism than is present in our house – perhaps they are wishful thinking rooms. And perhaps one day I’ll repaint the walls and neaten up the bookshelves and hang that gallery wall I’ve been wanting for ages, and put up the cute little mini shelf units I bought more than a year ago and… Or maybe I’ll just keep drawing the living room I want and somehow use that to manifest it, without actually having to do any work?
Illustrated kitchens
Kitchens are also (or sometimes more so) the window into a family life. Our kitchen is tiny, but our dining room is kind of an extension to it and we do spend a decent amount of time around the table (though less and less as the teen and almost teen have their own commitments). We aim to eat dinner at the table every day, and maybe succeed four or five days a week. When I draw kitchens, some elements will be based on our life, but I’ll also sometimes throw in some wishes, too. Though one of these kitchen illustrations is more of a feeling of a kitchen, and not quite as maximalist as my usual.
My ideal kitchen is a large one with a big range cooker and huge fridge freezer and lots of beautiful pots and pans and crockery and a really big farmhouse dining table and a double butcher sink (that I really don’t want to call a butcher sink, now I think about it!) and maybe even a sofa. A proper full-on living kitchen where everyone hangs out. Since it’s not too far off nest-flying time, I think that’s probably a wish that will stay unfulfilled. Would be a bit ridiculous to get one when there are only two of us to make use of it!
Illustrated bedrooms
When I was looking through my work to find pieces for this blog post, I was surprised to find that I hadn’t drawn any bedrooms. So I devoted some of my free drawing time over the past week to drawing this bedroom illustration. Again, it has some basis in our bedroom (though doesn’t show the other side of our bedroom, which is our office space), but also tells a bit of a story through some of the details, I hope.
Illustrated reading spaces
If you know me, you’ll know I’m a big reader (though a slower reader than I’d like, because there are sooooo many books I want to ready and new ones coming out all the time). So I wasn’t too surprised to find a few reading nook illustrations.
Illustrated studio
An attic studio illustration! Our attic used to be a full room for our offices – with an additional desk in the middle that had a spare computer for the kids to use. That was mostly before I was illustrating – I think we still had it when I was starting to get back into drawing and colouring and making patterns, because I remember clearing out a bookcase full of crime thrillers (that, for some reason, I couldn’t read after having children – not sure what’s up with that!) to make space for art supplies. (I now have two whole book cases, an art trolley and far too much floor space for art supplies (including lots of inspiration books – I think that’s maybe a topic for another blog post some time!) When the kids got older, though, they really needed their own rooms, so we had to rearrange the house and half the attic is our bedroom and the other half our office (kind of divided with some bookcases, not a proper wall, or anything. We also got our living room back when that happened, as all the toys migrated to their rooms, so that was nice (though I was very happy to having a living room full of toys when they were little).
Anyway… all this is to say, that I would so very much love the whole attic back and just for me for an attic studio – with room for an easel, a drawing table, all the tech and space for all the art supplies to be out and at hand. And wall space to put pictures and moodboards up… and space for all those inspiration books and magazines. I’d settle for a garden studio. Or even a basement studio, as long as it didn’t flood every few years. A room of my own… Please?
This is a kind of idealised studio illustration, though I think if I drew one today, it would probably have a lot more in it.
If you’re looking for a room illustrator for a project, whether a whole book, a magazine cover, some room illustrations for social media posts or maybe even an illustration of a new furniture range in some aspirational rooms for a furniture catalogue or similar… get in touch, because I would really love to draw even more rooms! And if you’re an individual who would love a print of any of these room illustrations, let me know in the comments, as I’m going to be investigating some different print fulfilment options soon it would be good to know what prints to offer first.