Lucy Rose illustrates "The Hidden World of Houseplants" for Hardie Grant Publishing.

Lucy Rose has been commissioned by Hardie Grant Publishing to illustrate the cover and internal pages for Alice & Maddie Baileys’ book “The Hidden Histories of Houseplants”, a book that explores the social history, art, politics, fashion and culture behind our favourite houseplants.

Starting off with the cover, Lucy was given a list of plants that had to be included and a rough colour scheme but otherwise had a lot of freedom to follow her own instincts, “this was great fun for me as I love designing pattern-like designs.”

After finalising the cover, the internal illustrations were next, offering up slightly more of a challenge for Lucy as she had to capture a higher degree of accuracy in her illustrations. Working back and forth between ProCreate and Photoshop, the illustrations perfectly capture the quality of botanical illustrations through their built up layers of texture and shading.

“I think I enjoyed every part of this project, from initial research and sketching to creating the finals. I loved that I had lots of freedom to come up with my own compositions and colour schemes. On a personal note, I was very excited when I first received the brief as I have a huge interest in houseplants so it was always going to be enjoyable for me.”