The Rebel Caterpillar

Article by Irene Laschi PART II: THE WORK IN PROGRESS The features I love most in Metlicovitz and Duncan artworks are for sure the limited color palette and the contrast between realistic and flat areas. I started from that to plan my illustrations. The color palette I know that softwares like Illustrator or Procreate could show you suggested color palettes, but I wanted something more personal (and I'm too old school to use them). I started defining the values, to have the right contrast between light and dark: Then I chose specific colors for each girl, according to values above. I wanted a nice balance between warm and cool colors: The drawing and the coloring process I started with outlines ( 1 ), then added flat colors ( 2 ), main shades ( 3 ), shadows ( 4 ), reflected lights ( 5 ) and lights ( 6 ) - as I always do when working in Photoshop (and not only in Photoshop, see following paragraphs). I paid attention to having different colors on differ...

Article by Irene Laschi PART I: THE INSPIRATION What's behind a project like PORTRAITS ? I've always loved drawing portraits, but I've always used traditional media on paper or digital ones that simulates them, like I did in this project . I had 4 exceptional models (my students Alessia, Susanna, Azzurra e Letizia) and I wanted to explore new way of drawing and coloring portraits in Photoshop. The inspiration came from two different past artists I've recently discovered: the illustrator  Leopoldo Metlicovitz (Trieste 1868 - Ponte Lambro 1944) and the painter John Duncan (Dundee 1866 - Edinburgh 1945). They're not related to each other, but they worked in the same period - the years of the Art Nouveau. Leopoldo Metlicovitz I've been studying traditional printing methods and I'm obsessed with chromolithography, the printing method used for late 19th century advertising posters, like the ones made for Moulin Rouge by Toulouse-Lautrec. To c...