Ah Mucha....How happy you make me.
I discovered the works of Alphonse Mucha when I was in Prague, at an art exhibition. I had seen some of his work before, but it had never struck me quite in the way it did at that exhibition. I have become entirely obsessed with his style. Whimsical women, line work, flowing hair, pastel colours... What's not to love? Such a brilliant example of Art Nouveau. I have decided that I want to learn how to recreate those images.
It's really funny, but I already had an example of his artwork in my apartment and had no idea. Last Christmas, my mum got a box of chocolates as a present, the box is in tin, with an illustration on the lid. I saw it and told her I thought it was beautiful. End of story.... until April, when she gave it to me because she remembered I had found it pretty. Fast forward to about three weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about Mucha, and she saw the box on my dresser, and remarked that the image on it was by him.
Coincidence? Yes, most definitely, and a fortunate one at that. :)
The first time I tried my hand at re-create the Mucha style, I used my little tin box as a reference. Of course, it's not an exact copy. I have nowhere near as many details, I've changed things, and I used completely different colours too.
I'm using just four colours of inks in this one. Black, red, blue and yellow. I like to mix my own colours, and I find that inks are more vibrant than watercolour. Above is the image in progress, on my very cluttered table, and below is the finished image, though I still need to un-wrinkle it.
I'm still in the sketching process for my second image, I'm working from a small reference image, that is, a lighter that has the image on it.... It's tiny. I've drawn it a couple of times already, but I'm still not satisfied, so I'll rework the big one until I like it, or start from scratch. I'm planning on doing this one in acrylic, just because I feel like it.
Ahhhh, and here is the finished version of this one. I do rather like it. I won't pretend to have any of the finesse of the artist, or even come close to it, but that's alright with me.
This last one, I don't like at all at this stage, but I'm going to redo it again, until it becomes better. It's very random how I decided to draw that one. The music was playing on my laptop, on shuffle, and the song Mein Herr sung by Ute Lemper came on. Now, that song is from the movie Cabaret, and I happened to have seen it produced this year by the KTS (King's Theatrical Society, it's the sister university of the one that I attend, we share the same campus.) and I loved it! It was fabulously amazing! So I found an image from the movie that I liked, printed it out and used it as a reference. (I also like how my printer started running out of ink, and it looks a bit like the German flag, how fitting.)
Such are my artistic ambitions. I don't claim to be good, I just draw for fun, weil es mir gefaellt.
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