mediocreativity

Primarily artwork. Mostly other people's, and a little bit of my own.

[newjackcole]

Rain Rain Rain

[blue--folder]

Patron saint of women who don’t want to talk to you on public transit

[milsae]

Self-care

[jareckiworld]

Oscar Oiwa  —  Light Shop  (oil on canvas, 2018)

[newjackcole]

Silo of Some Sort

[dadalux]

Maxfield Parrish (American, 1870-1966) - At Close of Day (1941)

[stamp-it-to-me]

a 2019 Japanese stamp from a series titled “Gifts From The Forest”

[id: a single postage stamp with many small illustrations of mushrooms and other fungi in greens and blues. end id]

[charlottecors]

[turnipot]

i love ducks 🦆

[libbyframe]

Sword of Isildur commission for twoamhoney.tumblr.com

[alexsiple]

sea level’s rising

[milsae]

Self-care

[geritsel]

John Singer Sargent - Portrait en profil of Rosina Ferrera

[artsyrabbits-blog]

Nyam- Osoryn Tsultem

Ensemble of the Clouds

1977

[thecollectibles]

Art by R_A_D_A

[newjackcole]

Tucked Away House

[mattjabbar-deactivated20240609]

“City in Paint” illustration series.

In many of my previous projects, I searched for pleasant, exciting, and nostalgic Japanese cityscape fragments. I then painted them as best as possible to make them look even more appealing. I tried to bend the reality I saw to do my artistic bidding, as is often done by animation background artists. Next, in the “Tokyo at Night” book, I explored and portrayed Tokyo’s night side, trying to uncover the truth about it. When painting those illustrations, I realized that I could make even quite desolate, grimy back streets seem appealing. This was a problem. Even though the final pictures looked “cool,” I wouldn’t say I like the original places, really, and would not want to live in a city like that at all.

So, together with Kana, we started thinking about how a more pleasant to live in city would look like. I tried to imagine everyday scenes from such a place without making them look too nostalgic and unobtainable. It’s not the “rose-colored” past or a world from an animated movie that will never come to be. I’m tried to paint a city that could exist in Japan even now.

I decided to paint digitally this time to convey more of the atmosphere of each place. I wanted to capture the temperature, the smell of the air, the play of the light, or the weather. For this, having the flexibility of digital tools helped a lot.

To fuel this creative attempt, I was using a lot of elements from the many reference photos I took in Japan during ten years of living here. Having a library like this allowed me to make the paintings more believable.

Technical details:

Painting: Procreate, Art Studio Pro apps on 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 inch

Editing: Photoshop

Brushes: Download my Procreate 5x brushes beta on Patreon.