#水彩

Väntar ut kylan, akvarell, 23x17 cm

Klarälven flyter förbi alldeles utanför mitt jobb. Även när älven fryser så är det nästan alltid öppet vatten på ena sidan. Genom hela vintern samlas det hundratals gräsänder vid iskanten.

Waiting out the cold, watercolour, 23x17 cm

The Klarälven river runs right past where I work. Even when the river freezes, there’s almost always open water on one side. Throughout winter hundreds of mallards gather on the edge of the ice.

Gäddtjärn, akvarell, 19x14 cm

Det här är samma lilla skogstjärn som i mitt förra inlägg. Samma udde där i bakgrunden, men en annan tid på dagen.

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This is the same little woodland lake as in my previous post. It’s the same cape (if that’s the word for it) in the background, but a different time of day.

Gäddtjärn, akvarell, 29x19 cm

Den här gjorde jag klart idag. Det är en vy över tjärnen alldeles bredvid vår lilla timmerkoja.

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Gäddtjärn, watercolour, 29x19 cm

I finished this today. It’s a view over the small woodland lake right next to our little log cabin.

「みつけた」
 制作画材/透明水彩・ ヴィフアール水彩紙
制作/2020年

所々、金色で縁を入れているのですが、uni-ball Signoのゴールドカラー太字用のペンを使いました。個人的な意見ですが、インクが沢山出るので筆圧の弱い私でもとても描きやすくストックで3本、シルバーカラー、ホワイトカラーも購入してしまうほどお気に入りです。

黄色とオレンジの部分は ZEBURA さんのMILD LINER Brush。 ペンで塗った後に水を含んだ筆で伸ばし透明水彩と馴染ませました。 黄色とオレンジの差し色が上手く入れれてお気に入りのイラストです。

Namazu - Yokai exhibition in Japan

This one is a namazu (catfish). Namazu are often represented in Japanese Ukiyo-e (prints) with human behaviour. As you can see on the second picture, the catfish has incredible whiskers. When I found the idea and drew the sketch  (picture 1), I was kind of remembering this picture, that’s why I drew very flexible whiskers.
As you can see on one of the pictures, we used our own fan as reference and origami washi papers to find ideas for the pattern and the colors of the yukata.

Pipe spirits - Yokai exhibition in Japan

In summer 2012, we traveled around Japan to witness many festivals and we saw to the Hachinohe sansha taisai, a very big impressive and colorful festival. We loved the pipe players clothes and gestures. This is what inspired us for this illustration. Cecile gathered pamphlets we brought back from the event, a watercolor sketch made on location by Olivier during the festival and pictures we took as documentation before starting to draw the pencil.

Drawing Japan is like traveling back in our memories. When we drew this illustration, we remembered all the atmosphere of the festival, the people we saw and we could almost ear the pipes sound. It has something magical.

Kappa – Yokai exhibition in Japan

The first yokai Cecile wanted to draw is a Kappa. Since we visited the beautiful town of Tono, Japan, in summer 2012, we felt inspired by the nature and the folklore of this city in most of our projects, especially for our graphic novel Onibi.

Tono is famous for keeping yokai world alive and you can see kappa figures everywhere. Kappa are water creatures living in rivers. It is said that in north of Honshu, when the winter was too hard, people used to give their youngest child to the kappa. It probably means they abandoned the children in the river because they couldn’t feed everyone.

Like most of the yokai, Kappa are both cute and frightening. They can be friends with children playing at rivers but they can also decide to drown them.Anyway, Kappa have a lovely weakness that makes them very touching : a cup full of water above their head that must not disappear or they suddenly loose all strength and become weak.

At first, Cecile draws idea sketches, remembering Tono mysterious atmosphere and the statues of Kappa we saw there, like this kappa figure watercolor sketch in location Olivier drew. When the idea is found, she gathers documentation : books of Japanese yokai paintings, fish and turtle on pamphlets and books with seaweed references. She draws the pencil, then Olivier makes the inking thanks to a light pad and a black pencil (UniPin 0.3). He humidifies the paper (Canson 300g) with water and fixes it on a wood plate before starting to color (Winsor&Newton watercolor).

Fox lady – Yokai exhibition in Japan

In may 2010, when we lived in Niigata, Japan, we had the chance to witness a very mysterious event in the mountains : a fox wedding under the cherry-blossom trees. It remains one of our most beautiful and strange memories from Japan. The inhabitants of the village had fox makeup and were celebrating this strange slow wedding until late in the night. We saw a young lady with a beautiful yukata and a fox mask upon her head plus a fox makeup on the face. She was acting like a real fox, with the hands closed like fox paws.

In Japan, it is said that foxes change into beautiful girl to attract men in traps ! This girls was sooo strangely beautiful that we couldn’t prevent ourselves from thinking she was a real one…

We used this idea many time for our sign sessions of our graphic novel Onibi but this time we made it very close to our memory of a strange and ecstatic spring day in the mountains.

For the clothes, we use washi paper (Japanese paper) that helps us to imagine the colors and the motif.