Emma Green is a part-time illustrator who did a degree and master’s at Bournemouth University. She currently works at Oxford Brookes and acts as a sort of teaching assistant to some of the classes. I’d never really seen her until recently, and today she gave us a short lecture on her education and current profession.

This is the piece of her work that really attracted me. I talked to her after the lecture and found out that it’s some of her older work, and that it was created on Photoshop.

I liked the colour scheme a lot, and the cut-and-stick feel of the buildings really attracted me. It turns out she uploaded the sketch into Photoshop, then used the polygonal lasso tool to fill in the buildings with colour.

Colour wise, you can see layers of red, then of blue, then red again. She’s interspersed blue details into red buildings, e.g. the windows at the very front, and vice versa. This makes the piece feel bustling and natural.

Texture wise, I like the white crayon-pencil brush she’s used to add details. E.g. the curls and lines on the bottom left blue building, or the bumps that look a little like bunting or terracing running along walls. Using a mixture of details lighter than the surroundings and darker than the surroundings balances out the piece.

How has this impacted my work? This piece has a similar feel to the busyness I’d like to portray in Utensia. I might use blocks of painted colour to try and mimic the aesthetic Emma has created. I may also use a white detailing pen alongside a dark one like Emma has here, to create a little more interest.