feeling blue
“I have written my name on the far side of the sky” -Yves Klein
Hello! It’s Lea again,
I hope you had a great week. If you don’t know me, it's nice to meet you! This is Sunday Spreads, my weekly personal illustration challenge. This week I continued some collage exploration which took a little longer than expected ( was also down with mild flu, but I guess crafting can always cure everything).
Here is the final piece and you can read more about the process below :
I really wanted to explore a vertical illustration this week, and continuing with learning how to collage. I think I have learned a lot of small tricks thanks to my little zine project from last week, and I was excited to try them on a bigger piece.
For the story of the illustration, I was inspired by my first day of school when I was 5, in a new school, in a new country, in a language I didn’t understand. I still remember quite vividly only knowing the words “ hello” and “ thank you” and feeling like a complete alien in a classroom full of little English speakers. And while all my fellow students were very sweet to me, I still remember the “lost in translation” feeling, while all the other students understood everything.
Here was the rough sketch, trying to stick to traditional only for now.
My challenge was to create a class room, full of different kids, doing different stuff, but also keeping a focus on our main character in the center. Which is why I made him blue to stand out, even though he probably would wish to fit in. I’ve always love a very particular shade of blue, probably inspired from one of my favorite children book as a kid, “Chien Bleu” by Nadja.
But it was also the blue of my school uniform, in my new school, in a new country, where I was dressed in blue, surrounded with kids dressed in blue, trying to fit in, but standing out.
Later in my art studies, I will discover the work of Yves Klein, the artist who claimed to have invented that particular shade of blue.
“ As I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue sky, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work. “ -Yves Klein
Although I’m not sure if I agree with that statement ( can one person really declare a Color as their invention? ) and the guy probably had a massive ego to appropriate himself the shade of the sky, but I still like some of his work, like this one in Centre Pompidou.
So coming back to the illustration, I started collaging directly on a sheet of A4 paper with the sketch next to me:
It took a little while to decide the color of the floor, of the desk, of the other students… but I finally manage to cut all my elements and work on the characters and their acting.
I’m not gonna lie, the whole process was pretty messy and long, but I tried to really trust the process and discourage my cat of walking all over it every time I turn around.
Until finally, after more than 10 hours, I finished it !
I scanned it and made some minor adjustments in Procreate for the final piece :
Anyways, Let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to reach out. I am always looking to connect with fellow artists & illustrators to share the joys and sorrows of creating pretty pictures from our heads.
Lea
