So I finished a new piece recently, I wanted something that I could take my time on. The concept for this first appeared in my sketchbook on an October evening around Halloween. I think I even had the final all mostly sketched up that same evening. I’ve been painting and inking it in installments, taking my time on each step, I’m quite please with the result!
~Greg
So I recently dusted off copies of the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix. Once again, I enjoyed them thoroughly, exciting and thrilling adventures in a vivid world of life and death. So, of course, it got the wheels in my head turning. So here’s what I came up, an illustration of Lirael in death. Honestly though, my sketchbook was becoming inhabited by sketches from this world before I started the piece so it was only a matter of time.
Last year during the winter doldrums, as I anxiously awaited getting outside into the garden I did a lot of reading. I happened across a fantastic book called The Complete Gnomes, written by Wil Huygen and illustrated by Rien Poortvliet. I am always interested in mythological creatures, but this book captivated me. It was so thorough and matter of fact that I quickly found myself lost in the book and especially the beautiful illustrations. The entire book left me with the desire to put on a hat and head to the woods with the hopes of finding a gnome myself. After I finished with the book I decided to give myself a project, to try on the style of Rien Poortvliet (very loosely speaking) and see where I landed. This is what I came up with:
I was pleased with how the image turned out. A few months later I started paying with a slightly different technique which I enjoyed greatly. So, liking the subject matter I tried making the piece again, this time using my own technique. Here’s what I came up with:
In the end it was really a fun exercise to try on someone else’s style, I don’t think I can do things like Rien Poortvliet ultimately, but at the end of the day I have two pieces of art to show for it, Huzzah! If you are a creative creator, visual art, writer, or whatever your stripe, I bet this exercise could be adapted for you. What’s something that’s inspired you lately?
~Greg
So at some point this summer I tried out a variation on my normal technique of preference. Here’s the first intentional piece I made with the style. The inspiration came from looking at a blog of different artist’s travel sketchbooks. Unfortunately I can’t recall the website now but there are plenty out there!
~Greg
So this summer we took a trip to Japan. Much of our time was spent in both the city and the countryside. Some of my favorite parts of the travel (many, many hours on the trains!) involved just looking at the landscape as it passed us by. Everything appeared new and unique and I felt like my brain was just bursting with ideas for projects back home. One morning in Kobe I made this watercolor. We had been to a Japanese bathhouse the day before and this is one of the images that was still fresh in my mind the morning after. Amidst the dramatic mountains was a simple house with a small rack next to it for the bike to sit and bunches of onions to dry. As an avid gardener I also loved seeing the gardens that were all around in the country. When we were in Tokyo there were no gardens and I wondered, “what do people eat, where do they get their food here in Tokyo?” But as we took the train out to Yamanashi the houses grew smaller and almost all of them had an abundance of vegetables growing close at hand. As an avid gardener I really enjoyed the brief glimpse we got into the gardening culture in Japan. In the middle of winter I’m beginning to get garden fever again. So as I’m beginning to plan my garden for a new season I’m also thinking of the gardens I saw over the summer, dreaming of drinking cool cups of Hoijicha or eating some green tea-flavored ice cream.
~Greg