Hi everyone! I’ve been listening to the Three Point Perspective Podcast for a few weeks now (obsessed!) and this is my first post on the forum. I don’t know if Introductions are a thing here, but they have been in other forums I’ve taken part in so I thought I’d start off by saying hello.

My name is Veronica Mui, I’m coming from a traditional art background, no college art education though. I got married young and have three kids 10 and under. I ventured into illustration about a year and a half ago and am figuring my way around, working towards a consistent style, building a portfolio, learning about the business and how to create a book. My first love before art as a child was writing, so it’s been wonderful to start writing again and express myself that way, but I still have a lot to learn.

I’m excited to meet new friends here, especially now when restrictions in America are keeping people from gathering like usually (I miss my art people!!)

I’m obsessed with Jessie Wilcox Smith, Alphonse Mucha, Komako Sakai, Taro Gomi, Ludwig Bemelmens to name a few inspirations.

I’ve been an oil painter for years and really hit a rut when I when to my first illustration class and was encouraged to try watercolor...whew, that was a mess I fussed with it for a year before I realized I just didn’t enjoy it. So I chased printmaking and found monoprinting which is just fabulous so I’m exploring and pinning down what exactly it is that I love making - what moods, what poses, what lighting, what colors, et.

I would love to see your work and where your inspirations come from, or if you have images that show how you built your style over time, that’s absolutely fascinating to me. I recently found an incredible illustrator who I really admire and scrolled through his instagram feed (which was LARGE) and it was so interesting to watch his progression over the course of three years - you could basically watch his voice become clearer and clearer and see what he decided to follow and what he chose to drop.

Feel free to share your work here showing the progression of your artistic voice, with or without images of your greatest inspirations!

Here are a few of my recent pieces.

Here are some earlier works

And two of my biggest inspirations, Jessie Wilcox Smith (whoops, it was pointed out to me that this is Elizabeth Shippen Green, not Jessie Wilcox smith , how embarrassing, I should pay more attention... thanks, friend!) and Komako Sakai

Just finished this piece up.. posted it in my first post introducing myself on this forum before I realized there was a post like this...sooo....I’m gonna leave it here too because I love looking over artists shoulders

Not sure if I’m going to do slowvember...it sounds really relaxing and I could definitely stand to spend a long time on something to improve, but I’m doing NanoWrimo this month so not sure I want to take on another month-long activity.

Right now I’m working on stylizing characters. I’ve always had a hard time changing things from reference photos (any left-brainers out there?!) and honestly thought I just wasn’t capable, but I had a break through in that respect last month, so I’m chasing those results!

I’m super inspired by Maurice Sendak and recently bought a collection of Little Bear and I’m just blown away by his handling of characters, emotions, and backgrounds, so I’m studying that hard and trying to emulate his mastery of those.

This is one of the first real scenes that I’ve been able to produce and be happy with! Background is pretty much pulled straight from Little Bear. It’s not finished yet, I will be adding more and darker line work on the characters and some throughout the grass and tree. I’m wishing I didn’t go quite so dark o the cat because now you can’t really see any detail - the pencil doesn’t show up on that gray. Their skin is a bit too pink and I’m thinking I’m going to have to look for a tube paint that has the exact skin colors I want (probably not going to happen, but I can dream haha) because mixing them is really a tedious guessing game.

This is a piece I just did which I’m considering a pinnacle piece - I just love everything about it, the pose, the lines, the colors, the suggestion of background. I’m really proud of it. Pieces like this help me pull through the days when everything I make seems like trash hahaha. Gives me hope for what I’ll be able to create one day.

Keep creating beautiful art everyone!!

Here’s what I’m playing around with this week. I was doing some master copies of Ezra Jack Keats and was having so much fun with the cut paper I decided to have another go at this months prompt (I don’t want to talk about the last attempt ).

I’ve also been working on putting together a dream portfolio and I noticed that there were reoccurring graphic shapes, a sort of randomness, and some neon colors, so I’m trying to mix those in here too. I’ll probably mess with it digitally when it’s all done to get rid of the shadows and such and smooth out the lines... Also, I don’t feel like wasting an entire piece of watercolor paper to make a perfect black border so I’ll probably finish that digitally as well.

Not sure where I’m going with the bottom left corner but I don’t want to make it draw your eye - maybe some rolling black/gray/blue hills rolling down towards the kid with a tilted table of candy in front getting thrown into the air? I may add another kid running towards us....or a couple...

I just wanted to share another one because I’m super excited about this! I’ve been working on discovering a process I love that consistency produces results I like. I’ve been deep diving into this for all of 2020 and usually I’m just slugging through making a bunch of trash BUT I every so often, I’ve been getting little breakthroughs that inform me, and today I feel like I got one of those! I made the image on the top right a week ago sort of by accident. I printed the background first and just wiped an area clean to draw the girl in and misjudged her height by quite a lot!! But I crammed her into that space anyway, and just really liked the result.. But I didn’t love how she had no color.. So next I tried the version under that one. I actually did about 5 prints before I got to this one which I liked somewhat, but the dress wasn’t doing it for me still. Today, I tried modifying a sketch I made yesterday to print. The sketch I did had pretty accurate proportions, but I wanted to try to replicate the short smashed proportions I had done last week by accident so I shortened her arm and dress by a fourth, and smashed her legs from above knee height to partial calf and enlarged her head. I tried giving color to her as well...And I feel like I nailed it! I’m just really happy with it. I ended up asking my three kids their thoughts also ( I do sometimes, but never with this much intention) after listening to an SVS ( I think it was? ) talk mentioning how in children’s illustration, adults might be the gatekeepers, but KIDS are your actual audience, and wrote their likes and dislikes under the image. They all had an opinion and made really good points! I’m excited to see if I can continue making consistent results in this way!

Here’s my day-late ‘fish’ I don’t know how long I’ll make it this year... this homeschooling is too much!

@dafoota Just wanted to pop in and give my two cents here because your comment hit home for me. I began my illustration journey about a year and a half ago and became increasingly frustrated - my style wasn’t coming together, I wasn’t able to finish a full illustration that I was satisfied with and even when I tried to tackle something more simple like just a character it was a fight! I did start wondering if maybe this just wasn’t the right fit for me, maybe I was just bad at illustrating. After a lot of navel gazing I finally realized it was the medium I was using! I had, without realizing it, put myself into a box - I am a traditional artist and traditional illustrations are done with watercolor. I was pushing away the things that were truly calling to me - what had been exciting me recently was printed artwork, collage, and mixed media! I was terrified to try those because I had no experience with them and was so scared that I would fail...But once I set watercolor aside and pursued the thing that was exciting (and frightening!) me, I found the joy in creating artwork again and that joy has been fueling me to keep going for the pure fun of creating! Try to pinpoint what gives you the most joy in the creative process, and think about what things are most important to you at the core of your being - what do YOU have that YOU want to share with the world. What feelings do you want your artwork and your stories to give your viewers. I realized that I want to share comfort, acceptance, mystery, joy, gentleness....Maybe a lengthy reply, but I hope some of my blathering helps! Best of luck to you.

Hi! Thanks for this info. I did see that category when I selected which one to look at from the drop-down menu...But when I went to make a post, I didn’t see an option to post into that category - it just gave me the option to post to ‘artwork’ without any other options under that. Am I missing something? Thanks!

Hi Everyone , I’m looking for input on my work so far. I’ve been working on finding and exploring my voice for the past 6 months and it would be really helpful to hear your thoughts if you don’t mind looking them over for a moment.

What I’m looking for:

• What is one strength you see in my work and one weakness
  *Which piece was your favorite and which was your least favorite
  *What feeling (if any) do you think of when you look at these

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and look. I’m loving being part of this forum - you’re thoughts and artwork are inspiring!

Veronica

@Dima-Eichhorn I like that she’s got tattoos

@Jade-Yaert thanks, I’m so happy with how it turned out, now I get to struggle to recreate that feeling

@Leah-Boulet thanks, I’m obsessed if I could just get results like that every time ‍️

Another vote for the first one! The window and picture aren’t feeling balanced though, I would experiment with different ideas there

@Elliot wow I love this effect though!! I was intrigued when the ink was applied and didn’t know what to expect - I was not expecting that look at all, now I’m going to have to watch this class too! I’m interested to see what happens now with the Windsor and Newton set

@Giuliana-Pappalardo yes! It does feel like that for me too thank you, looking forward to seeing your work as welll

@mcucchi thank you for your kind words! so glad to hear you’re exploring too! It does seem like a topic that I don’t hear much about and I believe it does take a lot more conscious thoughts, at least for some of us, than it does for others to find what works for them and how to make the kind of art they want to. Everyone learns and grows differently.

I didn’t go to an art school so no recommendation to share, but I would encourage you to look into scholarships so you won’t have to worry about creating a ton of debt. I’m sure you can find a lot of information about those through school websites or perhaps others can recommend places for that.

@Giuliana-Pappalardo awesome! I found their podcast first before the website and forum also and ended up joining, too. The videos are really great - I especially enjoy their third Thursday videos. The internet can be an amazing place and you can really learn whatever you need!

@Judy-Elizabeth-Wilson This is so colorful and sweet!

Not sure if I’m going to do slowvember...it sounds really relaxing and I could definitely stand to spend a long time on something to improve, but I’m doing NanoWrimo this month so not sure I want to take on another month-long activity.

Right now I’m working on stylizing characters. I’ve always had a hard time changing things from reference photos (any left-brainers out there?!) and honestly thought I just wasn’t capable, but I had a break through in that respect last month, so I’m chasing those results!

I’m super inspired by Maurice Sendak and recently bought a collection of Little Bear and I’m just blown away by his handling of characters, emotions, and backgrounds, so I’m studying that hard and trying to emulate his mastery of those.

This is one of the first real scenes that I’ve been able to produce and be happy with! Background is pretty much pulled straight from Little Bear. It’s not finished yet, I will be adding more and darker line work on the characters and some throughout the grass and tree. I’m wishing I didn’t go quite so dark o the cat because now you can’t really see any detail - the pencil doesn’t show up on that gray. Their skin is a bit too pink and I’m thinking I’m going to have to look for a tube paint that has the exact skin colors I want (probably not going to happen, but I can dream haha) because mixing them is really a tedious guessing game.

This is a piece I just did which I’m considering a pinnacle piece - I just love everything about it, the pose, the lines, the colors, the suggestion of background. I’m really proud of it. Pieces like this help me pull through the days when everything I make seems like trash hahaha. Gives me hope for what I’ll be able to create one day.

Keep creating beautiful art everyone!!