I came across today’s featured artist in a local book shop over the summer  and totally fell in love with her colourful work. The book I saw is called Beastly Verse:

How cool is that cover!? The inside of the book is even more wonderful!

*Note that the images below are not necessarily illustrations from this particular book

Joohee Yoon is an illustrator and printmaker who has a very impressive list of clients that includes, but is not limited to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and the Globe and Mail.

She has illustrated three books, The Beastly Verse, Re Tigre, and  Living Things which is a magazine publication. All beautifully done in her funky, colourful style. I’d love to own all three! (yes that is a note for anyone who knows me who is starting to think about holiday gift ideas…)

Joohee’s work really inspires me. I love the looseness in her style, and I really enjoy the way she works with colour. She uses a minimal number of colours, but she uses them so effectively. The printmaker in her really shines through in her work.

For example the print above uses only TWO colours, blue and red.  If we pick this print apart, I would say that Joohee printed the red first, and then laid the blue on top. The cat that appears purple has been first printed with red ink, and then the blue ink was laid on top to create purple! When you are a printmaker, you think about colour a little differently. You have to think about how you can get the MOST of of two to three colours, and so you begin to think about layering colours and what effects that will produce. You also consider how you may use the white of the paper in your print.

Joohee has this really funky, scribbley style. Theres a lot of texture there, and a lot of lines that overlap. Figures in the drawing above are overlapping, and they are transparent. It looks like a lovely children’s drawing made with crayon. I love how crammed together the figures are in this work.

This work above has a lot of texture and believe it or not there are only four colours of ink used! I see green, red, beige and a dark brown. In some instances the green is overlapping the beige ink to create a darker green, and brown overlaps the red ink to create a deep red in the big leaves in the forefront. It’s really beautiful!

I hope you are inspired by Joohee’s work! Please visit her amazing website to learn more about her, and check out all of her fantastic work!

Check back on Wednesday to see what I’ve been up to in the studio and in school! (I started last week!)