School is just about done… it was quite a tough end of the month in April and the beginning of May, but I managed to power through. Now I should be a bit more free.

 

Quite a while ago I decided to buy a 24 color set of Nicker Poster Color paints. I read about how Ghibli uses them because they dry quickly, and I can confirm that. On top of that I can make the colors translucent or opaque depending on what the ratio of paint to water is. I haven’t had much time to practice much with them because of school and the construction work, but I did try some whenever I could. This one was done before I started school this semester, but wanted to talk about it a bit before posting it. I just didn’t think it would take about 5 months…

I would say that for a self taught artist, the best way to learn is to try and recreate other peoples work and try to understand their process and color choices. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I decided to recreate a background done by Kazuo Oga, the background artist for Studio Ghibli.

I decided to choose this image for my study                                                                              (it’s from “Only Yesterday”/”おもひでぽろぽろ”):

I thought that I had documented the process, but thinking back I guess I was just focusing on painting.

As can be seen I didn’t really keep the proportions in place so I just focused on recreating the colors.

There’s an obvious difference in skill and color. But I was amazed at the versatility of the Nicker paints. I wonder just how far I can push them.

That will be all for now.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE