(Mon) Art Nouveau

Book cover design for Charles Beaudelaire's ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’

I have loved experimenting with my typographic illustrations so far. The swooping and swirling text style is based on my own handwriting – an exuberant version of it – so it has come quite naturally to me. However, it was not lost on me that this organic style is reminiscent to the Art Nouveau movement of the late nineteenth century, not so much the real typography of the period, but the decorative aesthetic.  

I decided to apply the style in a book design, and landed on Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Beaudelaire. Although the poems are from an earlier period, the title seemed particularly evocative and perfect for Art Nouveau, which was greatly influenced by the sinuous shapes in the natural world.

The overall design came together easily enough, but it was the flowers that gave me the most grief. In my original sketch, I had just drawn stylised flowers, but quickly decided that they needed to be more interesting, which meant realistic; my friend suggested Canterbury bells. This was much more helpful as I was able to use real reference to draft the flower from different angles more convincingly.

The original rough, with replacement flowers (right) based on Canterbury bells

The snake is based on the blue viper (Google it and be amazed by the gorgeous ranges of blue, aqua and jade of its skin), and then I had only to decide how many of the flourishes would take the form of snakes. The intricate intertwining of the different elements gives me joy!

Another struggle I had been contending with for months was Adobe Illustrator, which I was using to create the vector art. The latest versions (28.3–28.7) have a horrible bug that makes it extremely difficult to pick up anchor points and handles with the direct selection tool – it would take at least three attempts every. single. time. You can imagine how that lengthened the task of drafting such typography.

It has been the cause of enormous frustration and even physical pain in my hand and wrist from the stressful gripping of my Wacom pen. I was finally able to get hold of Adobe’s technical staff (after being ignored for months by them on the community forum), and the solution turned out to be to downgrade to vs. 28.2. After that, I was able to pick up anchor points and handles at first go, and I was able to complete the artwork with brilliant ease. It felt like a miracle! In fact, I almost sobbed in relief. Apparently – I read in an email this morning – the Adobe development team are working to iron out this flaw. (You can read more about it here.)

When the vector art is complete, I import it as layers into Photoshop and proceed to apply the textural effects and toning. Keeping the artwork as paths means it’s really easy and quick to experiment with different colours. In this case it was mainly the background and text colour I played with to achieve the right balance of alluring brights and muted shades for an unusual and slightly uneasy colour palette that suits the subject. I’m really pleased with the final result.

Alphabet Set

After having to put the risograph alphabet cards aside for a little while, I have finally been able to complete the set with letters P through to Z, hooray! It’s been an interesting exercise in learning how the tools work, and the different techniques required to achieve the desired result – you can definitely see the progression from Acorn to Zeppelin.

In between some of these tiny 3cm x 5 cm cards (inspired by vintage Eastern European matchboxes), I worked on other much larger pieces. When I finally returned to the last few letters, I was reminded what a difference the finished size of the work makes to the appearance of the riso effect. One of my favourite aspects is the faux misprinting effect, where text or graphics are out of alignment with one another, which is what commonly happens in real riso printing. I love that verisimilitude, and the charming vintage feel it lends.

If you were to ask me which is my favourite overall though, it would be hard to choose. But at the moment it is Zeppelin, because of the dramatic lighting which is applied even to the text. And I am fond of the Xylopipe – partly as a point of difference to the more commonly seen xylophone – but also for its bright and gaudy colours.

Yesterday I opened a new Instagram account @helena_turinski, where you will be able to see each of these singly, and also keep up with my artistic output. I’d love to hear from you there, or simply a follow would be warmly appreciated!

Woman in Red Tights

Today I thought I’d work on an illustration with some fashion content. One of the ideas I’d noted was a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing tights; I’d seen an ad on social media for a brand of hosiery, and thought it would make a fun subject for illustration.

The original sketch

I deliberately chose not to do this in a painterly style. I wanted something quite graphic and flat, with an interesting interaction of negative space, and an off-key colour palette. I resisted the impulse to add more tone, and I am quite pleased with the result.

Read More!

As I have continued to develop my risoprint illustration style, I wanted to work on something a little more conceptual than alphabet cards (as fun as those are). Last week I was reading something – I can’t even recall what it was, but it must have been erudite! – and the thought came to me: ‘Read more, get smarter’. Immediately following that was, ‘Hey, that’s a good idea for an illustration!’

I sat down to sketch up some ideas. The first one was easy, inspired by my eclectic taste in reading, as I like to dip in and out of different books depending on available time and mood. Some of my books are unputdownable (Agatha Christie), others are taken in little daily bites (poetry, essays) and others I open sometimes (history, psychology, philosophy).

Not many would know this about me, but when I was in my mid-20s, I did a short course on counselling, which provided an overview of the different streams of therapy; it also lead to a casual dipping into philosophy. Although I decided at the time not to pursue another career, the interest remains. It amused me therefore to juxtapose my fictional (ahem) reader reading two antithetical books at a time.

The second illustration was literally inspired by my own perpetual piles of books on the go that are scattered around my apartment, the idea being that one doesn’t have to be a pedant or snob about reading material. Pick a book, any book, and just dive right in.

Originally I was going to put my favourite books on the spines, but realised clearly they needed to relate to water in some way. I’ve only read two of these – Rites of Passage by William Golding (a favourite author, and this book was unputdownable; I think I randomly picked up the book while on holiday somewhere and ended up riveted), and Robert Drewe’s The Drowner. I read it not long after it was published in 1996, and remember nothing of it now, except that I assume I enjoyed it as it is still on my shelf, and not donated to a charity shop.

Booksellers love to promote books in summertime, since many people are on holiday then, but why wait? Go on – DIVE RIGHT IN, RIGHT NOW.

G–O!

Behold the next instalment of my risoprint alphabet cards!

There are thirteen days between the completion of the letters A and O, and now that I see these arrayed like this, it’s very interesting to review the evolution of my style. The first six letters are quite stylised, with only minimal tonal shading, but with O especially I have gone all the way experimenting with the ‘wet on wet’ riso brushes, to more painterly effect.

I have tried to stick to minimal colour palettes on each illustration, to maintain the verisimilitude of real risoprinting, and the number of colours on each card ranges from 3–5. This is unlike the potato pancake recipe, which utilises about 12 colours, at least two of which aren’t ‘real’ riso ink colours, and would not be possible to recreate in a real risoprint. A purist might turn up their nose, but I am okay with that.

Eleven more to go!