Usually when I flip through the Society of Illustrators books for inspirational artists, I try to pick one piece of art or style that appeals to me the most that day. This time I found several that were intriguing, but I picked this piece by Renata Liwska. I like the subtle shading and texture and softness achieved from a lack of harsh outlines. She took her inspiration from an old class photo, keeping the expressions and body language of the figures while replacing them with animals. (She says, "in the original photo there were children's drawings of soldiers liberating Poland in WWII" on the back wall.)
I'm also glad to be showing a piece by a woman--a lot of the famous or recognized artists are men. My background is in science where it was just understood that there was inequality (it's a popular subject--how to increase involvement of under-represented minorities), but for some reason I thought the arts would be different? Perhaps it was going to a college that was 60% female, where there were so many female actors the art directors were inclined to do shows like Three Sisters or do modern adaptations with gender-bending so everyone could get a part.
Gender aside, Renata does a fantastic job at capturing the light-humored, fuzzy characteristics of critters that capture our hearts. As someone who also likes drawing "cute" stuff, I like how someone can find a niche in children's books and be acknowledged for fantastic work. (Illustrators seem to appreciate children's books in ways that a lot of people don't.) She has illustrated several books, including The Loud Book, The Quiet Book, and Little Panda. Speaking of pandas:
Beautiful work. I swear that could be my fourth grade class picture except WWII was loooong before my time. I liked her interpretation of the wwII pictures in the background using animals.
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