I’ve been re-reading Ametora, trying to imitate the illustration styles of some of the artists important to Ivy history. I love the work of Ayumi Ohashi, for example, whose long career includes the first decade or so of Heibon Punch covers. Marx actually wrote about her earlier this year in a feature over at Ivy Style, and you can see more of her work at Momus’ blog.
I really like Ohashi’s use of dark, muted colors and how she carves up spaces without drawing lines over shapes. Her later work is much more colorful, but still retains that interesting sense of geometry. I remember seeing her paintings all over the place in Japan. In fact, she was recently featured in an exhibit this summer in Tokyo, titled “Haruki Murakami and Illustrators.”
So this weekend, while I was in Silverlake (a section of Los Angeles), I was thinking about a cover from Takarajima magazine, watching hip locals line up for coffee. I decided to later draw up something in a similar fashion.
I love this guy’s outfit on the far right – a big, olive trench-coat with “Make Fashion Not War” embossed on the back (I think it’s a Coco Chanel thing?). Underneath were a grey t-shirt, jean shorts, and a pair of Adidas Superstars. The guy behind him was wearing what looked like a Japanese pullover top and high-waisted, cropped pants. I really like how much fun these two seemed to be having with their clothes.
The other guys were dressed a little more casually. One was in a sweatshirt, pair of shorts, and some nice shoes (he looked great, despite being dressed so simply). Another was carrying a black Fjallraven backpack with brown straps; and the last had a very worn-in, black canvas Filson 256 bag. I love it!