Even Drawing takes Capacity Building

It turns out even drawing takes capacity building. I tried adding a background for the first time to one of what I’ve been calling “outfit” sketches up until now. I want to take these kinds of sketches a little deeper into potential characters and even stories at some point.

The inspiration for the character above is the combination of a still from the first video of a vlog on Youtube called Leisurely Life Diary of a 40 year old woman, Ayako, who moves to the countryside of Nagano with her young daughter and husband for the first time. The head and hair of the character is inspired by Nausicaä from the animated film by the same name.

I was inspired by recently re-watching said film with the father and son of the family whose home we are staying in this autumn and winter (who had never seen it before – it was like watching it anew for me seeing it with people who never had before) and reading Shuna’s Journey, a one-volume watercolor-illustrated graphic novel written and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki and published as a single bunkobon. In particular after reading the graphic novel, I’ve decided to publish a one-volume watercolor-illustrated graphic novel of my own at some point in the future. It’s very humbling for me to see the first art and drawings of artists (be they animators, videographers or photographers etc). It reminds me we all start somewhere.

I’ve also been stumbling on quite a lot of what I’d call scene art from the Ghibli films which I am not finding now to be able to reference but long story short they are drawings of a scene in pencil, with color and then with characters which really showed me the do-able pathway of how they become alive and how my simple outfit sketches have the potential to turn into something more. That’s all for now.