Making busier images

This week I had a Zoom call with other illustrators shortlisted for the 2022 World Illustration Awards.

Each of us had to do a quick intro of our work and show a bit of process, some final images, etc... In my group was this Japanese girl who makes crazy busy images of Japanese scenes. And as usual when I see something I like in someone else's world, I immediately thought : I want to make something like this.

Yuki Uebo - https://yukiuebo.com/sumo

What I particularly love in what she does is that her images are so crowded that you can barely (if at all) see a decorum. But it is the people that make the place. The place exists only because these people are there. In my images I tend to give a lot of importance to space. Up until now I thought my images lacked details in the background that could give additional information on a character, a culture, etc... I would give more of a feel of a place with composition, often with only one character, and what mattered to me was how this one character's place said about him/her. Having only one character made me feel more involved in the relationship with the environment. Now seeing this kind of image Yuki comes up with, I do not empathize with a character in particular and yet the place seems so vibrant because it is almost only people, people doing something I can relate to. Being at a show, walking in the streets, they have a common purpose and yet each of them has a personality, a story, a secondary goal. In this sense, I'm part of something much bigger. I also feel more in the present, as the image is a snapshot of reality, a moment that will never be exactly the same. In a fraction of a second, all of these characters will have moved. Some might have left the frame.

I usually refer to Sempé (who sadly passed away this summer) as my greatest source of inspiration in illustration. When working on my MA project 'The Point', he was the inspiration. When working on my projects 'Way Home' and 'On a Spring Day', I looked at some of his images again. Sempé was so good at focusing on people and places. An image could focus on one character with very few details around, like the sea, or an empty beach. Sometimes it would be a whole city (New York), not inhabited by people but by huge buildings. Sometimes his images were full of characters, each with a different purpose and personality. Sometimes people were just a uniform mass with a single idea.

In any case, they all had something to say.

I feel this is what has been lacking in my images a bit, characters are not expressing much. I am trying to express something by giving them a specific place in my images, but they are usually passive, expressionless, and too often seen from behind. I think this also has to do with my trouble drawing people's faces, or finding a convincing way to draw faces simply. I know this is something I have to work on.

I think I should try to explore putting characters in a big environment full of details, or places that are full of interesting people. Or both. I'd like to make images that have a strong sense of community, where you can lose yourself in details, noticing expressions or attitudes for each character, details of every day life, like in Sempé's restaurant cover for the New Yorker.

Jean-Jacques Sempé

I have two New Yorker jigsaws that I absolutely love for these exact qualities, like many of their covers. Colourful, full of life, and with a strong sense of shared purpose, shared activity or shared moment.

I had not looked at the illustrators' work further until today. And there's a lot of inspiration to take, especially in Ilonka Karasz's work... Reading more about her, I was amazed to learn that she was also a talented textile designer.

'Summer camp' by Charles E. Martin / 'Garden Center' by Ilonka Karasz

Covers of the New Yorker by Ilonka Karasz

Early this morning, on my way to my main source of revenue (a French bakery in the heart of Cambridge), I thought it would be the perfect place to draw for me. I have spent the last four months getting to know every little corner, every gesture and attitude of the bakers, cooks and customers. I know the purpose of each machine, what each loaf of bread and croissant looks like, and I have the best gallery of characters possible.

Well, as we say in French, "au boulot"!