Folk Art

A new Skillshare class from Liz Kohler Brown: Folk Illustrations with ProCreate

From the resources provided for the Art Nouveau class by Liz, I chose the gourd leaf and flower pattern from the Smithsonian Library illustrations and a cat illustration from the Flickr Commons to add to my inspiration board and practice, including a coffee mug from a photo I took at a favorite restaurant; the board is a mess, but still organized my ideas and possible palette. It’s also more than one layer; my eyes need bigger pictures. You can see my reference photos [copyright free], my sketch of the gourd vine, some ideas for colors, and my own photos.

I struggle with color; I have my favorites [blue, yellow, green, orange], but am unsure what works in a particular setting or theme. I started with an orange cat, because brown seems so dull. And the brightest, prettiest color on my palette was a plum/purple. I chose the orange and blue/green.

I could see that I could change the orange to a tan and the rusty brown to a brown and the cat would look like my current wild one. Luckily, Liz taught us how to change colors on outlines with alpha block and then filling in the new color with a reference layer.

So I recolored my cats and also the background layers. I also added textures to the two cat colors in this one:

I imagine I could fill in more, but I tend to get too cluttery. So I stopped at this point, waiting for a little inspiration, such as a vine under the cup and around the cats.

Now on to the rest of the lessons…and waiting to hear about your art…in your heart 🙂