Example of repetition from This is Rome
In the first part of his book, Steal Like an Artist, Kleon recommends starting your own inspirational family tree. Just as your person is made up the genes of those who came before you in your family tree, choose the artists and people who you want to make up your artwork. Then research who those artists say inspires their work and add those people to your family tree, and so on and so forth. Pretty soon you'll have a large network of inspiration to "steal" from. This idea isn't just for artists or designers, it's for anyone. I'm going to do this activity as a series here on the blog, as a way to journal it and hopefully inspire others as well.
In December I was walking around Anthropologie grasping for any kind of Christmas present inspiration for my sister and mom. Gosh was Christmas 2014 an uninspiring time. Anyways, a bright red book caught my eye. It was a large compilation of M. Sasek's books about countries around the world call This is the World. I resisted the urge to buy it right then (I was looking for presents for other people) but still bought it off Amazon as soon as I got home. It's a beautiful book. You probably already know that I love illustrating buildings, and there are only a few artists like M. Sasek who draw architecture with such style!
From him I'm going to steal:
In December I was walking around Anthropologie grasping for any kind of Christmas present inspiration for my sister and mom. Gosh was Christmas 2014 an uninspiring time. Anyways, a bright red book caught my eye. It was a large compilation of M. Sasek's books about countries around the world call This is the World. I resisted the urge to buy it right then (I was looking for presents for other people) but still bought it off Amazon as soon as I got home. It's a beautiful book. You probably already know that I love illustrating buildings, and there are only a few artists like M. Sasek who draw architecture with such style!
From him I'm going to steal:
- Repetition: He often repeats items for effect
- Scale: Size is exaggerated on both ends (small and big)
- Humor: He was one clever guy!
- Ordinary Life: His best illustrations are those that depict the oddities of ordinary life
- Perspective: To play on scale and humor, he painted from a different perspective, often from above, or really far away, or had layers of foreground, middle ground and background and even back-background
- Detail: tons and tons of layers of detail. I can't imagine how long it took him to finish a book!
Example of repetition from This is Munich
Example of perspective from This is London
Example of ordinary life from This is New York
Example of humor and perspective from This is London
Example of detail and ordinary life from This is New York
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Example of scale from This is Munich
Example of scale from This is New York
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