I believe many of you who are reading my blog are aspiring illustrators. If you are, here is something you may want to remember, or to work on, if your art school instructors haven’t taught you already: we have to be remembered by something we are good at, so when a prospect client see a topic that need to be illustrated they know who to call.
Most obvious ones prospect clients think of my work are Japanese and/or Chinese themes. I am a Japanese, but I had also studied Cantonese for three years and I have strong interest toward Chinese culture. And people somehow see that in my work. There are other themes like sexy girls, action and sports, comic book look, snow….
And odd one is, which is today’s topic, water and underwater theme.
The illustration here is a project published recently in Scrubs, a magazine for nurses. The article was called Swimming in Fear, about a nurse’s fear of breathlessness in water compared to the pressure of being a nurse. When AD Maxine Davidowitz called me she said it was a perfect assignment for me. Indeed.
Why do I draw a lot of water in my work? The big secret (or not?) is: I have a severe hydrophobia. I can’t swim, and I know I will never learn how to swim.
Water theme that keeps coming back to my works are almost my secret fantasy. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Big Blue. It is my ultimate dream to swim like a fish. (I also have fear of fish, by the way!)Some process pics here…
1) starting out with lots of idea thumbnails…2) reference materials…
3) sketches
4) discussion with the AD, and minor adjustment to the sketch
5) let’s draw!
6) go through Photoshop coloring process, and then…. finish! (as you can see, not as many layers for this particular illustration, but lots of layer masks!)
7) how they look on the pages
And…. here are just some examples of how water has been dominating my work (and life!).
PLANSPONSOR Magazine
STORAGE Magazine
THE WALRUS Magazine cover
PLAYBOY Magazine
THE UNWRITTEN issue #19 cover
GQMONEY Magazine
Yuko Shimizu’s Cover Art for Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
Shimizu also created the artwork for Link and Grant’s previous anthology, Steampunk!, also with Candlewick Press. For Monstrous Affection, Shimizu tells us:
“They wanted something that tie them together without making it obvious. Anthology covers can be tough to come up with ideas at the starting point, because it has to represent multiple stories by different writers. There was a lot of back and forth with the art director, Nathan Pyritz. At the end we decided to focus on the relationship between human and monsters. Clients usually don’t necessarily call me for monster illustrations, so I had a lot of fun designing it.”Ultimately she created a cover that is both pretty and unsettling, a shadowy monster with teeth that seem ominously concrete and floral patterns that are alluring and red with warning.
Find out more about the anthology below, including the full table of contents.
Predatory kraken that sing with—and for—their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side by side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you’ll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today’s top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.
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