I've always been fascinated by japanese culture and philosophy, so when I was offered to join the "Untranslatable words" project by a collective of illustrators, my mind immediately went to the concept of Wabi-sabi, a word used to describe the beauty of imperfect and impermanent moments.
My goal, as an illustrator, was to communicate my vision about this feeling.
I decided to represent a moment of peacefulness experienced by a person who was reading and writing all afternoon, sat in a corner of a very simple library and, looking out the window, realised that daylight was slowly disappearing, making everything glow with amber lights and dust speckles dancing in the air.
These are inspirational pictures I used for my moodboard, unfortunately I could only find the first photo's source, it's from Avard Woolaver, I'll leave the link here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/avardwoolaver/7573704430/in/set-72157631650021829/
Here are the preliminary sketches and lights and shadows studies I created.
This is the final piece, colored and rendered.
Hope you appreciated going through this project with me,
Alice Noah
