JAPAN ILLUSTRATIONS - VIRTUALLY TRAVELLING IN LOCK DOWN

Throughout the course of lock down (due to Covid-19), I found myself running incredibly low on both inspiration, and motivation. Over the summer is when I'd usually visit botanical gardens, museums and travel, which allows me to gather imagery to draw from, or sketch on site, and now this wasn't possible.

Then I remembered reading about a photographer, Jacqui Kenny, who is agoraphobic, and uses Google's 'street view' function to find interesting buildings and places to take images of. This inspired me to travel virtually myself, and find a range of interesting buildings to draw from, in one of the most unique countries for architecture, Japan. It's also a place I have always wanted to visit, and a culture I am fascinated with.

Once finding my favourite buildings, I illustrated them using a dip pen and black Indian ink.

Japanese buildings illustrated using a dip pen and Indian ink. Buildings found in Kyoto, Shinjuku and Minato City, Tokyo.

I've really loved using pen and ink to illustrate these buildings. It achieves a really detailed appearance, whilst also having a sense of naivety which I quite like.

After drawing the buildings in ink, I scanned them, and digitally coloured them in Photoshop. These ones have been fully coloured.

I also began playing with different colours and being selective in what areas I coloured, as well as changing the outline colour.

I've had a lot of fun virtually travelling Japan and drawing from it, it's re-sparked my creativity, and provided me with a lot of inspiration. It's definitely something I'm going to continue doing, and there are many other places I'd love to explore and draw from.