About this item
True beauty is found in nature, making this the perfect sketch book for your art inspiration!As if being responsible for dazzling sunsets and the aurora borealis were not enough, nature is also guardian to the universal principals of design. With mathematical perfection, its recurring structures seem to magically adapt as they show up in hundreds of ways: the radial star at the center of snowflakes, fruits and flowers, and the arms of starfish; spirals at the heart of nautilus shells, unfurling plants, and swirling storm systems.Borrowing the beauty of nature's forms can help you create beautiful artwork. Observing the structure of nature's forms can help you to be a better designer. The inspiration is limitless. Nature's design magic is a balancing act found in its perfect ratios. The sections of this sketchbook--Star, Branch, Spiral, and Fan--focus on four of those disceptively simple design principles and why they work. Author/artist Yellena James uses her own nature-based drawings to guide readers toward looking closely at each design form and the places where it occurs. Readers will discover ways to use each form in their own artwork, realistically, abstractly, or as motifs in repeat borders and patterns. In a non-academic fashion, the text explains nature's beautiful balances, and the art of using them when you draw and design.
About the Author
Yellena James is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. James' work explores the intricate and delicate forms of an imagined ecosystem, inventing flora and fauna that twist and float together in a magical dreamscape. Preferring pens, watercolors, and acrylics, she combines colorful arrangements of animate shapes and tangled lines that are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi. Each piece she creates is a glimpse into an intimate world that possesses its own ethos and radiates its own emotional range.
James has participated in shows around the United States and overseas, including solo exhibitions at Giant Robot (San Francisco and Los Angeles) , the Here Gallery (Bristol, UK) , the Hijinks Gallery (San Francisco) , LeQuiVive Gallery (Oakland, CA) , and more. She also has done illustration work for Anthropologie, La Mer, Crabtree and Evelyn, Crate and Barrel, Relativity Media, and many others. For more information visit www.yellena.com.
