Discovering our style - Who's in?

[Miriam]

@Meta, I just took a look at your Instagram, and your illustrations are really good! I don't know anything about the children's book industry, other than books I've seen, but your art looks like it would be great for children's literature to me.

[Miriam]

@neschof said:

after some brutal culling

:smiling_face_with_open_mouth_closed_eyes: Ha, ha! That's a great description!

@neschof said):

colour....? I'd love some help with this

I don't know much about color, but I am noticing a lot of bright colors, with somewhat subdued saturation. I especially notice the same Pink! in several of these images.

I'm also seeing that most of the images have people or buildings or other human objects. Only a few of them have only animals/nature.

[Miriam]

This post is deleted!

[bugeyefly]

@neschof Did you assemble the two boards at the same time? The second group feels much more of a piece to me than the first one. There are three in there at least that make use of the same complementary colour approach (blue-orange) for their mood. The range and depth of colour is greater in the first group and I can't see a pattern in the colours there.

[Kat]

Hi, all! This is a great thread to follow, and I'm really impressed with how good you guys are at analyzing these collections. I've been trying for months to come up with a dream portfolio (watched Lee's video awhile ago) but I just can't seem to whittle it down to just 20 images. Then I find more....it's a real struggle, but I'm going to keep trying. Anyway, thanks for all the great examples of dream portfolios and analysis - just wanted to thank you all for sharing!

[LauraA]

@neschof Yours really does have a consistent style! I'd call it "fanciful lines." And did you notice how much pink and blue there was?

[LauraA]

@Zachary-Drenski I notice that we like a lot of the same artists (some of yours l like a lot but had to eliminate them in the end, others stayed), but we chose different pieces or styles that, in the end, have a different effect together. It's interesting how people can like the same artist, but get a totally different read on him/her!

[Zachary Drenski]

@kat Cut the extra pieces out! It's so much fun once you get started!

@LauraA I was really surprised with how my dream portfolio turned out. I thought I liked color more. I haven't seen your dream portfolio but I can imagine all kinds of interesting combinations using these artists. It's really interesting.

[LauraA]

So, do we post these here or create our own thread? I gather people are doing both.

Anyway, I think I just proved that I am stylistically confused . After culling and culling, I still have four boards! They total over 20, but I'm still going to put them up here to see if anyone can find what they all have in common. Here's the best explanation I can come up with:

1. The first set is the kind of illustrations I liked as a child, and they still have something I deeply long for in a book.

2. The second set probably have something to do with my studio painting degree. I love all the artists involved, but I probably wouldn't copy any of them directly. And I do love bright color, but then why are two of my other boards so unsaturated?

3. The third set (the "Japanese" one) is very near to my heart. It may even be my favorite. I can't figure out why, as I am not Japanese and have never even been to Japan. But I have also loved this kind of art since childhood.

4. The last set is my favorite modern illustrators. I have a great respect for all of them. How much will my style modernize to meet up with theirs? I don't know yet!

And finally, here is my Instagram account so you can see my work: https://www.instagram.com/lauraintorino/ My favorite posts are the Puritan girl, the man looking into the pond, Cosette, and perhaps the little boy with the blanket hair. But there needs to be more production!

Haha! If anyone wants to help me make sense of this, I'd be extremely grateful!

[LauraA]

@Zachary-Drenski Just posted. I have a color/no color problem as well!

[braden H]

@Miriam said in Discovering our style - Who's in?:

I'm wondering if you might be "trying to hard" & are too focused on finding works to copy. Perhaps you could benefit from allowing yourself to relax more, and try gathering collections on boards for art that you don't necessarily want to copy, or do that style, but just like.

This is pretty much what I ended dup doing While the dream portfolio I ended up with isn't perfect it gave me a place to start (I'm gonna over the next month add and subtract images).

But I was definitely overthinking it, lol

[burvantill]

@Miriam Thankyou. I have done this before with my phone. I uploaded my own pics of a sewing technique I used for Boy Scout merit badges. I haven’t used it for anything else though. I forget about that feature. Thanx for the reminder.

[chrisaakins]

@LauraA @Zachary-Drenski seems to be a common theme these days...

[Heather Boyd]

@Braden-Hallett I'm working on mine again but yeah over a month -bringing in and taking out until I am more settled.

[Zachary Drenski]

@LauraA Looking at your work and your dream portfolio a few words to describe them would be 'nostalgic, tenderness, and hand-made.' For some reason when I looked at your dream portfolio, Aaron Becker popped into mind as a possible combination of all of these (not saying you should emulate his work). Your work is really lovely, by the way, and am interested to see how you would handle more complex compositions.

[NicolaSchofield]

Thank you for commenting - yes I need to find that exact pink paint!

I think illustrating people is a weak point of mine so I'm very drawn to images that do this well and in an interesting way. Definitely a priority for me to work on.

@Miriam said in Discovering our style - Who's in?:

I don't know much about color, but I am noticing a lot of bright colors, with somewhat subdued saturation. I especially notice the same Pink! in several of these images.

I'm also seeing that most of the images have people or buildings or other human objects. Only a few of them have only animals/nature.

[NicolaSchofield]

@LauraA lots of variety in your dream images as you say. The word that keeps coming to mind for them as a whole group is soft. I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that but somehow the images generally feel soft / calm / gentle. This is through the subject matter and composition (often figures looking away from the viewer - contemplative) but also through subtle texture, line work and blurring of objects / figures into each other though the same techniques and use of similar colours.

I see a lot of this in your Instagram images but not all - you have a mixture of soft and bold styles.

[NicolaSchofield]

@LauraA In the end I think I got rid of the few images I liked but that looked out of place in the group. I will have to redo this exercise treating each image individually rather than in context with the whole portfolio. For now I am happy though and yes the pink / blue was a bit of a surprise because I generally don't like that combo. I need to do a master copy or two to really analyse it!

[NicolaSchofield]

Yes, I gathered all the images at the same time - it's just split in two for ease of posting here. I think I'm now going to do a few master copies to get a better feel for the colours. There are a couple of images that I really don't want to copy. I'm thinking I should remove these from the portfolio for that reason and replace them...

@bugeyefly said in Discovering our style - Who's in?:

@neschof Did you assemble the two boards at the same time? The second group feels much more of a piece to me than the first one. There are three in there at least that make use of the same complementary colour approach (blue-orange) for their mood. The range and depth of colour is greater in the first group and I can't see a pattern in the colours there.

[NicolaSchofield]

Yes I see what you mean about Matisse!

Playful is definitely a word I would aspire to someone say about my portfolio so that's a good direction I'm headed

@chrisaakins said in Discovering our style - Who's in?:

@neschof I love your dream portfolio. I see a whole lot of lines used as texture and pattern and a lot of expressive movement. Your dream portfolio reminds me a lot of Matisse's work and has a playful feel to it.