Kinuko Y Craft (Eliza's Pick)

Kinuko Y Craft is an artist that I greatly admire. She is an illustrator who utilizes color in a bold, yet delicate manner to create dreamy, floating quality in her work. Craft's work is often a focus on the book she is illustrating for, but much of her work contains mythological or fantastical subject matter. Her paintings are incredibly detail intensive, yet despite this, they feel very loose, not at all cluttered or congested. They maintain a fantastic visual flow. Craft initially does a very robust pencil drawing on artist clay board and then paints over that in watercolor. She then seals the watercolor and paints over it in oils to create a finished product.

I admire Craft's work due to her amazing attention to detail, her imaginative depictions, and the fine, and delicate beauty she maintains throughout all her illustrations. I love the dreamlike quality of her work. They bring back memories of Grimm's Fairy Tales that were read to me when I was a child. (especially since some of her paintings cover some of those tales)Her paintings are so lively and colorful they pull you right into the story she is telling and the detail makes you search for all the subtleties in the events depicted in her works.

Unfortunately her website doesn't allow me to take images from it so you can view her work here. http://www.kycraft.com/art_gallery0.html

While her work is quite different from the previous things posted, I would most closely relate her illustrations to Prof. Thielker's pick this month,Jacob El Hanani. While both artists use completely different materials, their use of color is totally different and one depicts people while the other depicts abstract form; Craft and Hanani's works are both intensely detail oriented. Both artists want the viewer to really take time to look at their work and notice every little item in their pieces. Both artists produce pictures that invite the viewer to get lost in admiring each stroke, each tiny form embedded in their works.