mattjabbar

[mattjabbar]

OK, so you all convinced me to post more stuff here too (instead of killing this blog which I had planned to do for some time now – I guess the tides of the Internet are really hard to read and I really did not expect people to flow back to Tumblr all of a sudden). Anyway here is my newest painting:

I imagined a scene containing a Kura (Japanese warehouse) being open on a windy but bright autumn day from scratch, making a lot of rough thumbnails and sketches and exploring the idea deeply before starting the final image.

To my surprise, the contents of the picture flowed from my imagination quite freely, and I had just to look up and confirm a few architectural details of the iconic design of the building to finish the illustration.

#art #watercolours #japan #atmosphere #autumn #illumination

[mattjabbar]

"Tora no Mon" (Tiger's Gate)

This project, commissioned by CELSYS, the company behind the painting application Clip Studio Paint, consisted of an illustration and an accompanying video.

I was asked to paint an illustration later to be used for promotional materials and review the Clip Studio Paint EX application in terms of using it to paint one of my scenery illustrations.

I was inspired by a photo of a weird tiger statue that I found on one of my walks around Tokyo already a few years ago. I wanted to create a place where such a statue would not look out of place, so I decided to re-image the entrance to Tokyo's Tora No Mon (Tiger's Gate) district. I used some reference materials to get the architectural details right, but overall, what you see in the piece is a completely made-up place.

#clipstudioofficial #clip studio paint #digital #art #illustration #abd illustrates #background #scenery #video #speedpaint #time lapse #Youtube

[mattjabbar]

Had a lot of fun with this one!

I wanted to try to draw the lines with a ballpoint pen and then color them with watercolors. I think it went pretty well! There will be a video on this one! This piece was inspired by a small shrine we found on one of our walks close to our apartment few months ago.

#watercolor #pen #line #ballpoint #art #drawing #painting #japan #shrine

[mattjabbar]

Shibuya River re-imagined.

I made this illustration for the Japanology Plus television program run by the NHK World and hosted by Peter Barakan. I was featured in an episode exploring the relationship of people with Tokyo and a special episode about my art. 

This piece was made as an example of what I'm often thinking about when making my art — not only showing Japan's cityscapes in a way that makes them look cool but thinking and indicating what could be done to improve them. And so, this is the Shibuya river as I would like to see it — not a pitiful concrete-clad stream running through grey backstreets but a place that would be fun to visit and rest at.

Technical details: - 300 g watercolors paper  - LAMY AL-Star M  - Sailor seiboku ink  - Schmincke watercolors

By the way, this is how that place really looks like:

#painting #watercolor #sketch #Pen and Ink #fountain pen #tokyo #shibuya #illustration #art #myart

[mattjabbar]

“City in Paint” illustration series.

In many of my previous projects, I searched for pleasant, exciting, and nostalgic Japanese cityscape fragments. I then painted them as best as possible to make them look even more appealing. I tried to bend the reality I saw to do my artistic bidding, as is often done by animation background artists. Next, in the “Tokyo at Night” book, I explored and portrayed Tokyo’s night side, trying to uncover the truth about it. When painting those illustrations, I realized that I could make even quite desolate, grimy back streets seem appealing. This was a problem. Even though the final pictures looked “cool,” I wouldn’t say I like the original places, really, and would not want to live in a city like that at all.

So, together with Kana, we started thinking about how a more pleasant to live in city would look like. I tried to imagine everyday scenes from such a place without making them look too nostalgic and unobtainable. It’s not the “rose-colored” past or a world from an animated movie that will never come to be. I’m tried to paint a city that could exist in Japan even now.

I decided to paint digitally this time to convey more of the atmosphere of each place. I wanted to capture the temperature, the smell of the air, the play of the light, or the weather. For this, having the flexibility of digital tools helped a lot.

To fuel this creative attempt, I was using a lot of elements from the many reference photos I took in Japan during ten years of living here. Having a library like this allowed me to make the paintings more believable.

Technical details:

Painting: Procreate, Art Studio Pro apps on 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 inch

Editing: Photoshop

Brushes: Download my Procreate 5x brushes beta on Patreon.

#painting #digital #Procreate #japan #background #scenery #city #builidings #photoshop #rain #moody #mood #retro #colorful

[mattjabbar]

Since I did this old piece of scenery painting already a few years ago, I always looked back at it with great fondness. This was the first "serious" piece of artwork I created using Procreate and iPad Pro that convinced me to do my creative painting away from my computer and Photoshop. Some parts of that image were even done at a cafe too!

Recently, I decided to try to replicate that free and a bit fantastic-looking style of painting in a project that we are conceiving together with Kana. I based this picture on some photos that I took myself, trying to mix them enough to create an entirely new place.

To see how I painted it, you can watch my recent live streams on YouTube, where I documented almost the whole process live!

#art #digital #procreate #Illustration #Japan #scenery #background #colorful #shops #cute #retro #summer #chill

[mattjabbar]

A new watercolor picture.

This started out as just a concept sketch in my Moleskine Art sketchbook. I wanted to try if I could draw a scene from a short story I’m working on. I liked the pencil rough enough to clean it up, test colors in Procreate, and color it with watercolors. I struggled a bit with the yellow Moleskine paper, which is not really well suited for watercolors. Still, I managed to get this looking OK enough in the end. Tools: - Moleskine Art sketchbook (the red, hardcover one) - Blackwing 602 - Schmincke watercolors.

#watercolor #Illustration #Moleskine #notebook #sketchbook #Japan #relax #garden #green #blackwing #pencils #art #sketch #Watercolour Illustration

[mattjabbar]

The problem with “moe style”.

Some recent work offers and e-mails that came to my inbox directly prompted me to write down my thoughts. This type of message I’m talking about here is easy to spot. Most of the time, the e-mail will have these words in the first paragraph: “we would like you to paint this in the anime style” or “we want it to be a manga-like drawing.” Because the word “manga” means “comics” and “anime” is just “animation,” these requests mean something similar to “we would like you to write us a novel.” The problem is that when I ask the sender what exactly do they have in mind, and to send me some examples of art in the style they want, what comes back, is usually moe style...

...an episode stands out in my memory. It happened when I was working on a short animation, and the time came to design the look of the main female character. A staff member asked me openly, and without any evident embarrassment: “OK, so what’s your fetish?.” I was so stunned that I just stood there silent, so he just went on “you know, glasses or dropping eye shape, or maybe sexy stockings?.” I just ignored his question at that time, but I cannot forget this exchange even now...

→ READ THE WHOLE TEXT ON “Art vs. Entropy”

https://artvsentropy.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/the-moe-style-problem/

#moe #illustration #japan #female image #society #problem #art #article #text

[mattjabbar]

I have been working on other things this year - sketches, stories, concepts for things, etc. I'm also working on the one big commission that (with the helo of my fabulous Patreon supporters) will allow me to stay afloat this year, so I'm quite busy. I managed though to make this bigger illustration with watercolors and fountain pens.

You can see the process and hear me talking in more details about it here:

I'm thrilled to get back to this style of storytelling illustrations with a bit more complexity to them, characters, and a proper backstory - things that I liked about my "Cold in Yokohama" or "Bicycle Boy" series. This time I got inspired by a really old photo that I took in Kyoto's Arashiyama just after a storm that caught me there passed - the still dark sky was maybe not as ominous as the one in the picture, but it started this idea.

Tools: - Canson Moulin Du Roy paper (cold press) - Fountain pens: - Indigraph EF (Rotring ink) - LAMY Safari M (Rotring Ink) - Platinum President F (Carbon ink) - Schmincke Horadam watercolors - white poster color paint

#watercolor #painting #kyoto #japan #storm #clouds #pen #ink #original #Illustration #video #how-to #tutorial

[mattjabbar]

A next piece I did using the reference photos pack I recently shared on my Patreon. I want to show that you can approach making art using these photos with many different tools. Here I used just pencils in a sketchbook.

Surprisingly this piece seemed to be the one I had the most problems with so far. I made many false starts and once had to start entirely from scratch. I guess my lack of experience in drawing with only pencils and no colors is the cause. I should do more pencil studies like this one to get better!

With this piece, I also wanted to get a bit further from the reference photo, changing the perspective and contents a bit to make it more interesting (I hope). You don't have to stick strictly to the photo when creating your scene – it's more important to make the final piece interesting!

Tools I used:

BLACKWING Palomino pencils

Midori Cotton sketchbook.

#blackwing #mdpaper #sketch #sketchbook #paper #pencil #japan #garden #temple #drawing

[mattjabbar]

The series of new watercolor paintings of storefronts is growing quite pleasantly. Based on some of my ideas that I had left from my “Tokyo Storefronts” book and a lot of your suggestions from Patreon and YouTube, I already did eight pieces.

See all of the pictures on my website here:

https://mateuszurbanowicz.com/works/newmisegamae/

And the list of ideas that I received so far is also here, so if you want to add something that is not there already, you can comment.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s62/sh/a62bd816-2e47-4add-0d4e-1db7ac31d6b6/5a029ccfcf83a3f588fad4c641a0ac51

I’m quite fond of this series. The opportunity to use all the ideas and parts of interesting buildings that I could not put into my book for some or other reason is a great thing. Here I can just do whatever I want without being limited by reality, uncommunicative shop owners or weird corporate rules, and come up with cool (but believable) shop designs.

All the pieces are available on my INPRNT store here:

https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/mattjabbar/

#watercolor #Illustration #tokyo #store #storefronts #mateusz #urbanowicz #pen #ink #watercolours #painting #city #retro

[mattjabbar]

A digital painting done in Procreate, based on a reference photo, done in about 8 hours. I will upload a video of the whole process to YouTube soon!

Recently, Kana took the iPad I was using to make her Edo Tokyo comic – it seems that drawing on the iPad in Procreate gives her the best speed and quality of lines from the solutions we have tested (Intuos tablet and a rented Cintiq 16).

So I used this opportunity to update my iPad to the 12.9 version. I’m actually trying to use only the iPad for most of my computing needs, so not only drawing and painting but also writing, emails, blog, consuming media etc. This is going well so far, even though there are some things that are just unnecessarily difficult. I will probably make a blog post about this endeavor after some more time.

Tools I used:

- iPad PRO 12.9 inch

- Procreate

#procreate #procreate5 #digital #painitng #Jpan #garden #colorful #bridge

[mattjabbar]

I just published a new article. This one is important to me as I explore what it means (for me) to make art and, more importantly, make “good” art. I also explain where the name of my blog came from:

[mattjabbar]

OK! This is starting to be quite fun. I already finished the second piece based on the reference photos set I uploaded to Patreon.

This time I decided to stray away from my usual watercolor ways and try something fresh – color pencils in a cotton paper Midori sketchbook.

This one took me more time than I expected – I thought I would be done in 2 hours, but in the end, I spent most of today on it. I even had to scrap the first version after drawing one of the lanterns because I did not like the color choices. But well, it was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot!

Tools I used:

Caran d'Ache supracolor 2 color pencils

Caran dAche neocolor II pastels

Faber Castell Albrecht Dured color pencils

Midori Cotton sketchbook.

#color #pencils #drawing #japan #garden #nara #temple #autumn #sketch #colorful

[mattjabbar]

Some time ago I was asked by the good people of MIDORI JAPAN  to test and showcase their Cotton Sketchbooks! Today the video is out on their website!

These are some seriously nice to use sketchbooks. For all the sketching for the New Storefronts I have been doing recently I used these Midori Cotton sketchbooks.

https://www.midori-japan.co.jp/md/en/about/

They took some seriously gorgeous looking video and awesome sound!

#midori #japan #designphil #cotton #sketchbook #pencil #video #ASMR #drawing

[mattjabbar]

Just a quick sketch of a cute small port city in Japan done from one of my many reference photos.

This is a part of a small thing I decided to do on Patreon - I shared 20 reference photos of various Japan scenes so we can all draw and paint using these. I will then comment on all the works during an online live session next month - fun and study! 

Tools I used for this one:

my Schmincke 6 colors mint can set (see on YouTube)

Raphael collapsable trave brush

Blackwing natural pencil

Hahnemühle watercolor sketchbook

#japan #sea #port #cute #watercolors #sketch #simple #pencil #watercolours

[mattjabbar]

New texts blog

I wanted a place to post only my longer text pieces that would allow you to follow (mail, rss) and comment, so finally, I set up a new BLOG! It’s HERE: 

https://artvsentropy.wordpress.com

Read it if you want more of my longer texts on art, making things, efficiency, mental-health, my tools, thoughts about art-living and other topics.

You can follow there, but just following me on Twitter will also get you any new content notifications:

https://twitter.com/gommatt

Here, on Tumblr I want to continue uploading illustrations, sketches and other art accompanied with short texts.

#blog #update