The fundamental spirit of art making today has seen no so much difference from the past. Thanks to the advancement of technology, traditional crafts are no longer realized in its traditional way. I want to give an introduction of Illustration Play 2: An expedition to the extraordinary witnesses and a significant number of unconventional approaches.
It has a lot of different style of works in this book. I really like Mayuko Fujino’s works. She is a self-taught paper-cutting artist who began her practice in 1999. She started her unique paper art because of the influence of the Japanese traditional stencil dyeing. Though there might be natural influences from traditional Japanese art in her work, her works are much more personal. Traditional art was developed from time-honored custom with strict basic forms, but her life style is for from those.
I could learn things from her works. Her reality has a multiple structure. She feels like everything has four layers of meaning: a main layer that varies with time or by individual with other layers existing at the same time. According to her works, we can found the idea came from a sacred tree which she saw in Lwate Prefecture in Japan.
In my opinion, her works have combination of traditional elements and real photos. She used modern of composition of a picture. It often has a strong visual shock. I prefer traditional elements of China. In the further, I think the development of traditional culture is very promising.
All in all, Illustration requires time to gather suitable elements and new inspirations through tryouts and research. Illustration is a significant part of graphic design. I am more familiar with illustration after reading the materials and forms in this book. These contents give me a considerable number of creative inspiration about visual communication.