A new illustration experiment I finished recently. I saw this old telephone box on one of our (mine and Kana’s) evening walks. Lately, we go outside mostly after the sun goes down - because of the heat.
I really liked the light coming from the telephone box and the house deep in a garden on the left side so I made some photos for future reference. This time though I used them only as inspiration to make up my own scene from scratch. I think it came out pretty nice.
I put more time than I usually do into making a nice and interesting composition that would guide the gaze of the viewer through the picture along some main points - the telephone box, the house in the garden and the house in the distance. I tried to use the trees, the bamboo pole and signs on the street as guides.
Apart of the composition, this picture was also an experiment in colors - I wanted to try to use more simple palette of colors inspired by night scenes in Japanese woodblock printing, like those of Kawase Hasui.
Here are some examples: https://www.pinterest.jp/mattjabbar/hanga/
I also used an airbrush with watercolor paints for some soft highlights and shadows for the first time! We have one on hand because Kana used to use it to paint her clay figurines. I knew that the Japanese animation background painters use airbrushes so I wanted to try it out too. It worked great!
It took me 2 days to finish this piece - it takes longer with no linework but I think it was worth it.
Technical details:
・ paper: Canson, moulin du roy, cold press, 300g/m watercolor paper
・ sketch: Bic evolution HB pencil
・ colors: my main Schmincke watercolor set, mostly Potters Pink, Payne’s Grey and Prussian Blue
・ airbrush
・ white Rotring ink
