For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Glasson presents a series of abstract compositions that represent the natural world in the tactile intricacy of her chosen materials. “For this series, I have abandoned the realism of my portraiture work and am using natural and synthetic inks to create playful abstract shapes,” she tells Zócalo. She describes the process as “totally different” from how she usually works: “With these, I give all my attention to materials and colors,” she says. “They are wildly fun to make, and at times even meditative.”

Glasson’s Sketchbook invites you to zoom in close to get lost in the fjords and forests of her paint, or to stand back and find yourself face-to-face with ethereal creatures from other worlds or dimensions. Glasson finds pleasure in how open the work is to interpretation and how the shapes can “sometimes reference the natural world and other times seem otherworldly or just slightly ridiculous.”

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Pusa gives us an array of crisp, cybernetic flowers to herald the arrival of spring. Note her prominent use of solarization—digital extrapolation of a familiar effect in chemical photography, where extreme overexposure leads to a reversal in tone. In Pusa’s flowers, the color shifts are psychedelic and transcendental, giving the plants a distinctly futuristic twist.

Of the Sketchbook, Pusa says, “For me, flowers are not just beautiful living things but have a deeper meaning of hope, inner strength, and creativity. I hope to convey this feeling with my series.”

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In her Zócalo Sketchbook, she puts nature under the magnifying glass—depicting it dripping out of pipettes and filling up test tubes. By using the tools of science to explore the natural world, she gives us one of the great gifts illustration can offer: making the familiar new again. “The way we humans see and interact with nature is drastically linked to the historical period we live in,” she tells Zócalo. “Right now, nature seems like something that exists far away from us, and the only way we have contact with it is by studying and analyzing it.” So next time you’re out in the world, why not picture the things you see around you inside a giant Erlenmeyer flask? It just might change your focus.

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For this month’s Zócalo Sketchbook, Curran has done what any good Hollywood biopic will do for its subjects—have them portrayed by maximally attractive and charismatic actors. “Though I admire the precision of scientific illustration that studies our earthly flora and fauna, I can’t help but to instill a little of the fantastic into my own designs,” she tells Zócalo. To that end she brushes just a touch of movie magic onto her menagerie to make the familiar feel new and strange. Or, as Curran says, maybe it’s just making what is already wonderful and strange even stranger.

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Dullaghan imagines five phantasmagoric river towns—from a row of houses built along a river full of rowers to a lunar colony to a city comprising the shell of a World Turtle. Of her Sketchbook, Dullaghan tells Zócalo, “I’ve been watching too many nature documentaries lately that all present evidence that humans are overstepping their bounds with nature, so my illustrations nod to the encroachment of humans on the natural world.”

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For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Zaman invites us into a series of five phantasmagoric greenhouses that are bursting with flowers, infusing some much-needed floral energy into our world. Notice how the wild abundance of lines and colors that make up her flowers play with the minimal depiction of the orangeries themselves. The flowers within create the buildings as much as the structure itself—not content to remain contained.

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For his Zócalo Sketchbook, Verdin bridges the visual and sonic to document his impressions of the natural world on vintage audio cassette tapes. Capturing the sounds of his local environment in 30 second bursts—available to you by clicking on the play buttons below—the illustrations themselves recreate the iconic look of some of the audio tapes that first led Verdin to making music and manipulating sound in his youth.

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