New Year Illustration by Jui-Ping Lee is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 A' Design Award in Digital Art Competition Category.
IronDigital Art· 2024
New Year Illustration
by Jui-Ping Lee
A' Design Award Winner in Digital Art Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #158137The Design
About New Year Illustration
In a tranquil courtyard, amidst the gentle flurry of winter's snow and the vibrant hues of autumn leaves, sits a graceful figure adorned in an exquisite Kimono. The scene evokes the essence of Wabisabi, embodying the beauty of solitude and serenity. Delicate patterns adorn the fabric, mostly Pines, symbolizing solemnity; and the rhythmic Seigaiha representing the tranquility of the sea. Zooming in reveals more intricate details, a stone plate bearing the artist's pen-name rests to the left; and upon the Kimono, patterns of mice representing the new year 2020, the year of mice.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
New Year Illustration is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. New Year Illustration is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. New Year Illustration is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The holy grail it to make the work beautiful.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
Make beautiful works. Make works that when people see it, they can easily feel the breeze in the painting, the sunshine from it, the scent that flows around, and want to go into the world of the painting to sit in there, to interact with objects in there
How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
40 hours, I recall.
Grand Interview
Your masterful integration of traditional Japanese elements in New Year Illustration, particularly the authentic Kimono patterns and Karesansui setting, speaks to deep cultural research – could you elaborate on how this intensive study influenced your creative decisions?
So creativeness is not like popping out of thin air, but like fermentation, or brewery - you collect lots of ingredients and let it sit, while waiting for the "Eureka" moment where everything suddenly clicks together and your creative inspiration stirs like a hot spring all over the place.
The intricate layering technique you employed in New Year Illustration, utilizing 935 canvas layers, creates a remarkable depth – what inspired your decision to approach the composition with such meticulous attention to detail?
You can say it's like a kind of OCD - obsessive-compulsive-disorder - that it's not like "inspired", but paranoid to attend to details and make it perfect for the eyes. Well, artists usually have to some degree OCD and that's what makes an artist and artist.
New Year Illustration beautifully captures the concept of Wabisabi through its portrayal of solitude and tranquility – how did you balance these contemplative elements with the celebratory aspects of the New Year theme?
So the key is saturation. When you see the background, the red and yellow leaves, they are vivid and splendid, but when it comes to the main figure, the dominent color is black, and the saturation level is low. That's the exact reflection of wabisabi - even though you are sitting in a colorful world surrounding you, your heart remains still, as if you are enjoying your own solitude but feel tranquility in there at the same time.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- An elegant figure with splendid Kimono, serenely sitting in a yard on a cold winter's day at new year, with colourful leaves and slowly showering snow around her that represents the traditional artistic term, Wabisabi (beauty of solitude and tranquility).
If we zoom in, it can be seen that the Patterns are mainly Pines, which is used in the most formal kimono, to be worn only on ceremonious occasions; and also "Seigaiha (sea waves)", which represents tranquility.
Aside from that, the stone plate on the left reads the pen-name of the artist; and on the kimono, there are patterns depicting mice, to celebrate 2020, the year of mouse. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Original dimensions at 5600*3150 px, with 935 canvas layers
- Tags
- Illustration, Kimono, Furisode, Kouyou, Karesansui
- Production Technology
- Drawn using a Wacom Cintiq Pro 32, with software Easy Paint Tool SAI 2.0
- Design Challenge
- The key challenge is to make a painting while keep the authenticity of the elements - the kimono, the karesansui ("dry yard") and the red leaves. While many other illustrators prefer drawing kimono-like outfits, this work must be authentic on the kimono design so it can fit the theme properly; under such condition, the creating process became much more difficult due to the fact that it can not be a free-form creation, but a restricted one that the combination of all the elements in the painting must be meticulously designed and crafted.
- Research
- Research especially on the meaning of the kimono patterns was conducted, to better represent kimono while avoid improper designs. Books and documents are examined, and different combinations of patterns are tried in the painting, and the one with best both cultural and visual effect was determined, resulting in a design which is both having superb color representation and cultural meaning that befit the theme of the work (new year).
- Inspiration
- When I was sitting alone in my home watching a video about how Kimono's (traditional Japanese dress) are made, I suddenly imagined a figure in Karesansui (Japanese stone yards), surrounded by maples and wearing the most fine, magnificent Kimono; and I, a "photographer", would quietly approach, crouching on the ground and capture the evanescent moment with a single-lens-reflex camera (which is my canvas and pen)
- Project Duration
- The vague inspiration of it formed since 2017-2018, and the actual drawing started in December 2019, finished & published in January 2020.
- Operation Flow
- At first sight, you will immediately focus on the figure in the middle, in spite of the fact that the saturation level of the background is much higher. This is called the "blurring perspectives" technic that by burring out items whilst no obvious perspective cues, it creates a huge sense of space, and can lead the beholder to focus their sight at once at the non-blurred items, namely the figure in this painting, sitting in the middle, creating a "photo-like" effect.
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