Digging deeper into illustrating rooms

Trying to focus on a niche

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am trying to get better at niching down.

Niching down

Though, actually, it occurs to me that my joining in with #theydrawtober has been a bit of a distraction from this. Once that’s done, I will get back to my A to Z of Furniture, which is very relevant for both room illustration and hand lettering. I have been really enjoying it, though, and I am only a few days of completing a whole October, which I haven’t done in any challenge for a long time. It’s helped a lot that work has been quieter this month. I have been getting a bit annoyed, or bored, maybe, with the colour palette. Though I do love how they all look together with a consistent (mostly) colour palette.

My #theydrawtober images up to Day 27

Anyway, I thought I’d start with doing some research, so I have been looking through some of the art books on my shelves, and took a few (not remotely professional) photos of some painting and illustrations of rooms, to look at more closely. (Note that this is just for the purposes of me noticing things that I want to explore more in my own room illustrations, I’m not studying any of it in terms art history.)

Some paintings of rooms

Some illustrations of rooms

And I’ve started a Pinterest board of room paintings, illustrations and film stills and anything else I can see that’s interesting in terms of room illustration.

Screenshot from my Pinterest room illustration inspiration board

The ones that draw me in the most are those with a flatter or distorted perspective. I am not sure if that’s because that’s how I tend to draw, or if I tend to draw that way because I am drawn to them.

I was also really drawn to the house cross-sections with little snapshots of rooms. They make me think of dollhouses and Bramley Hedge books and also this book that I had when I was little which folded out to make a house. I loved it so much. I tried searching for it, but no idea whatsoever what to search for.

Other things I noticed being drawn to are especially busy compositions (which is not a huge surprise) and images that include a window, which I don’t think I do a huge amount of the time. They do appear sometimes, but mostly not with actual scenes visible outside the window.

Selection of my own room illustrations

I am planning to do some more research, particularly looking at picture books and also room illustration used within advertising (I’m kind of hoping to find some mid-century gold there). But I’m also going to do some sketches to explore cutaway houses and room illustrations that include a window with a scene outside. I want to use this exploration to create a number of new room illustrations (or room-related illustrations), and then I’d love to make them into a zine. I might have to do some zine research, too.

If you didn’t see last week’s post about setting up an Art Stack of some kind, do go take a look. I’ve had a few people say they would be interested in helping out, so I’ll be arranging a call in November to chat about how it could work. It would be great to have a few more ideas, or people who would like to get involved.

What should an Art Stack include?

Coming up this week over at The Illustrated Plant Kitchen - I’ll be sharing a recipe for a lovely meal I made last week and for paid subscribers there will be an illustrated printable meal planner.