Ghibli Studies (Patreon)

If you've been following for awhile you might now that I'm focusing my deliberate practice on environments. I have been trying to pull the threads together on a project and I want the vibe for it to feel like "Ghibli, but make it PNW". In order to drill down on this topic a bit more, I pulled a bunch of thumbnails from one of my favourite Ghibli movies - My Neighbor Totoro.

Ghibli studio work has such a softness and yet also a vibrancy to it. The natural settings feel so real and alive.

Do I think I can achieve the same level? No, but if I can get 10% of the way there I will be pretty dang happy I think. 

So these studies were pretty interesting, I'm proud of myself because this is the first time I feel like I've gotten *almost* all the way through by following what for the last few months has been a very alien-feeling process. First I pencilled out the shapes, then I blocked out the values in grey. I painted that over with some "undercolours" trying to get the base to be cohesive, and slowly built up the colours over that. I tried really hard to pick and mix colours by layering them rather than picking them (I didn't pick any colours from the references). 

It's interesting that I wasn't quite able to get to the same level of contrast as the original. I think next time I'll be a bit more forceful with my washes (higher contrast paints) but despite its softness I think each of the studies manages to at least evoke the reference in terms of colour harmony.