Last week I had some time to once more delve into my "Urban Watercolours Sketching" book by Felix Scheinberger 2011 (above left). I really like his freehand illustration style and the book is so cute and easy to read...
So I thought I'd focus on the chapters "What is beauty anyway" and "Less in more". He encourages you to paint what is around you and look for your own subjects for inspiration. Artists ought to be authentic and tell something about their world. So anyway, I thought my teacup and saucer would make a cute illustration. This was a lovely designer teacup given to me for Christmas last year from one of my students that I teach - hence I've called it "Becky's teacup" I did two similar versions, but thought the second one turned out slightly better. In the Less is More chapter, Felix encourages us to be economical with colours when illustrating. Hence, I tried to deliberately not paint every space in the picture, but left some parts completely untouched. I tried to make use of the white paper as an element. I do like the effect of this technique for these urban illustration styles. It is my aim to do more of these illustrations over the coming months...I think they look great on the products in my design shop www.zazzle.com/juicyhues
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There is a great book (featured above) called "Kimono and the colours of Japan" by a kimono collector called Katsumi Yumioka. (Also "Summer kimono and the art of Japan) These books are fabulous references for colour theory about Japanese colour schemes and their use in kimono.
Each page shows a single colour in a photo of a kimono with a description of the colour and its meaning in a Japanese context. For example, white, black and gold is an expression of cheer. Red represents the sun, blood and fire. Various botanical motifs are also explained in context of the traditional kimonos. So, with being inspired by colour theory and Japanese style, I completed a new painting featuring a Geisha in a blue kimono (below right). This was actually a re-creation of an earlier painting (below left) taken from the same source photo. I wanted to show the kimono in full length this time and experiment with more unstructured background styles... The paintings are about ten years apart, so as you can see, my style has really not changed at all... |
AuthorSacha Grossel is a practising Visual Artist from Australia. Archive
February 2019
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