Plants Make Everything Better

Plants make everything better. They filter the air, can be great conversation-starters, and add life to an otherwise bland, cold living-space. Sadly, when you have no natural light to shine on them in an interior room of the home, you are limited to using artificial or 2D plants. Surprisingly, artificial plants are often more expensive than the real ones, so 2D it is!

Moving from Michigan, I wanted to embrace the whole of what it means to be a southern-Californian and that means desert plants! So I found a lovely shower curtain for the guest bath featuring some cacti and various succulents—very appropriate for the Valley aesthetic. But, again, I can’t place cacti in a room with no light, so I needed a little artwork to liven up the bathroom.

I drew these three pieces to match the style of print on the shower curtain. Just a rough, barely-visible sketch does the trick when you are working with watercolors. The magic happens when you add the paint. It brings these poor plants to life!

First, is the Snake Plant (Sansevieria). This is one of my favorite purifying houseplants because they require very little maintenance, can do well in low-light, and add a lot to a room. I had one before moving, but he had to find a new plant-mom. He’s living well, now; He’s got a new pot and everything. So spoiled. It may be a while before I am emotionally ready to adopt another.

Cactus/Prickly Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruit is surprisingly refreshing and sweet, almost citrusy. I recently tried it for the first time, and I was expecting a bitter flavor—don’t ask me why. I would have never guessed that they can be invasive. How can anything that bears fruit be invasive?

Lastly, a simplified representation of a Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) which is native to Arizona. Although, I don’t imagine they would make good house plants, they are very neat desert plants. Saguaro are the largest cacti in the United States and some are known to live to be almost 200 years old! Very cool, but I think it’s best to keep the 2D version for my bathroom.

In total, these little 5x7 plants took about 35 minutes, that’s a lot less time and water it would have taken to grow the real ones.