This is my Graduation Project for my Major in Graphic Design
at Hanoi University of Industrial Fine Arts in Vietnam.
THE REFUGEES is a 2017 short story collection by author and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen. The eight-story collection, set in different locations in California and Vietnam, earned favorable reviews from critics, particularly for offering insight into the lives of migrants like those the book depicts. My project focuses on illustrating seven stories published in Vietnam, recollected as "NGƯỜI TỊ NẠN" by Hoi Nha Van Publishing House.
As for the art direction, I chose the loose, impressionistic approach inspired by Urban Sketching drawings to capture the raw humility of Vietnamese identities through many things: the people, the locations, the Vietnamese totems...
Inspired by Egon Schiele and Robert Valley, the perspective in the artworks was skewed to highlight the unraveling mental states of point-of-view characters depicted in said drawings.
The color palette was almost monochromatic, with Prussian blue as the primary pigment, contrasting with occasional yellow shapes to highlight the emotional beats depicted in the illustrations.
At the start of the painting process, the sketches were done digitally before being traced onto Baohong 300gms Coldpressed Watercolor Papers. Then the artworks were painted using a mix of Holbein and Daniel Smith watercolor pigments. After that, the paintings were scanned again to the computer to make some minor adjustments.
