studyin' art
as i've posted about before, i've been taking time off from creating art to recover from some Life Problems™️. so while i've got a lot of downtime - i spent like, a solid week and a half unable to leave my bed for very long - i thought i'd pass the time by studying art.
recently, i had hit a wall with art... the last "polished" drawings i had worked on were all the way back in August. and Life Problems™️ kicking my ass certainly didn't help. when this happens, i try to shift my focus to something else. which i did! i went into an absolute frenzy trying to get a site put together, set up this blog, etc etc.
... and then after burning out from all of that, my body begged for rest and i begrudgingly complied, not having a choice in the matter. i was eager to start studying, though... hitting that wall really bugged me.
with the help of a friend, who bravely & nobly put together a big collection of artbooks for me to peruse, i'm now free to study to my heart's desire...! they're mostly anime artbooks, ranging from the 80s to the early 00s. lots of cool fantasy illustrations. despite growing up with an older sibling who's always loved anime, it's a massive blind spot for me... so it's been pretty fun to flip through.
because of the timespan that these artbooks are from, a lot of these illustrations were made using traditional art mediums. there's some that i can tell were made with digital art programs, but they tend to use older programs and techniques, which gives them a particular look. i'm particularly smitten with the illustrations made with traditional art mediums, though... Mutsumi Inomata's watercolor art has really stuck with me.
her compositions are so striking to me... i really love how they're so strongly framed, with such clear silhouettes and carefully placed colors. her linework and brushstrokes were so delicate and intricate. i love the way she drew hair, clothes, and somewhat abstracted background elements. as i flipped through her artwork, i was so blown away... it felt closer to the kind of art that i'd like to make.
also, a lot of pieces from a Magic Knight Rayearth artbook really caught my eye, too...
i'm kind of obsessed with the way it fuses a lot of traditional art nouveau elements - heavy ornamentation, organic flowing shapes, intricate frames and compositions - with fantasy anime art. the linework and coloring is soooo nice to look at.
anyway, i've got a lot more artbooks to go through. that's just some of the work that's captured my attention so far. i've got a lot of thoughts brewing in my head about how i'd like to move forward with my own work, and what kind of inspiration and techniques i'd like to implement... it's the spark i needed to keep going, i think.