Artists I like: Len-Yan

First of all: I have been able to work on my rainbow forest painting a little more but not quite enough that it's worth posting about yet. Hopefully by my next post it should be finished.

Instead I wanted to talk about the work of Len-Yan and a bit about my own style and art.

So for years Len-Yan has been one of my biggest inspirations eating away at the back of my mind.... and you probably couldn't name a single painting or drawing of mine that showed any signs of being inspired by her art because they never reach further than the roughest sketches. 

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First of all before I get lost in other things to talk about: What I love about Len-Yan's art. 

Her digital paintings are completely coated in symbolism. I don't know what most of it means and her descriptions don't give any answers either, but it's hard to not see hidden meanings behind absolutely every single random detail in each painting. Now maybe there's nothing there, maybe it just looks like it, but there's this huge weight of story and meaning behind each piece.
Symbolism is something I've always wanted to play with heavily and some of my art can get a bit of story or symbolism snuck in, mostly my D&D characters but I'd love to push it further. 

The low saturation is another thing I love about her art, something I would fight to do in watercolour with my current skill levels, still I should try it out digitally. As an example, the gold inside the cup in 'The Ascended' above is probably one of the highest arias of saturation in all of the above paintings but I had to desperately search in the golden aria to find a 75% saturated bit in it and I can't find higher. However, since the rest of the painting is even lower in saturation, almost grey, it makes the gold shine out. I need to learn to stop pushing the saturation as far as it will go. Despite the low saturation there's actually quite a variety of hue in even the greyest of the paintings.

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So back to my art. I suppose one frustration I have about my current style is...it's very shallow? Don't get me wrong, it's nice to do the sort of serene dream like stuff I come out with most of the time but it's very limiting in tone. 

Heh, I suppose to be honest the last two years of college, and some of my current life, have left me with an awful lot of frustrating and negative feelings and I've got no way of channelling them. There's very little that is personal about my artwork and I desperately need to let the personal out in some way or another. For a while I just wanted to copy Len-Yan's style completely but now I want to take bits from it, mostly the symbolism and go all out with it, push it as far as I can. 

I've wanted to do something, loads of things, in this style for a while now but I never do. My current problem is I have so many other things to do instead: A commission, the Dee con mascot competition, in theory a Christmas painting (yeh, right) and the comic for Terrier Studios.

It's frustrating to be focused on art for others and business when you want to do something really personal......But to be honest...I still probably wouldn't. If I draw it people see it. Even if I just draw something in my sketchbook and keep it offline well...my sketch book has never been able to stay a private thing, I suppose I could just hide it away and avoid taking it places but then what would be my excuse to avoid talking to people at parties? 

I've still not learned how to show other people my feelings properly, the people on DeviantArt I don't mind so much since they're strangers but to show anything personal so someone I know: friends and family, is terrifying.... because any reaction they give, no matter what they actually think of it, will turn into a bad reaction in my mind. 

Still this blog post has helped a little, mostly because no one reads it and it lets me scream out into the void.  

 

Oh, and because no doubt it will happen...

Hi mum.

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References:
1. 'Saccharin' by Len-Yan (2012). Can be found here.
2. 'Introduced Species' by Len-Yan (2014). Can be found here.
3. 'Drowning Lessons' by Len-Yan (2013). Can be found here.
4. 'Loss' by Len-Yan (2016). Can be found here.
5. 'Rhodolite Garnet' by Len-Yan (2014). Can be found here.
6. 'The Ascended' by Len-Yan (2016). Can be found here.

7. 'Albus Corvus' by Len-Yan (2016). Can be found here.
8. 'Revelation' by Len-Yan (2014). Can be found here.