The theme for the gardening column in D2 was titled “Hyrdelandskap” or “Shepherd’s landscape”. I though it’d be quite nice to use the title quite literally, and did some sketches of victorian girls with bonnets and shepherd’s staffs in pastoral landscapes. Infused with a twist of goth sensibility I thought it would make for an interesting illustration.

An interesting reference is the Lolita fashion style, which has an immense following in Japan. It has nothing to do with Nabokov’s Lolita, but refers rather to Victorian clothing, and porcelain dolls in particular. This makes the wearer look like an upscaled puppet, as all details seems kind of oversized.

During the research however, I ran into Little Bo-Peep from the nursery rhyme. I was struck by the naive earnestness of the illustrations from the children’s books, and decided to do a fully fledged, oatmeal eating, milk drinking shepherdess.

I was doing the last touches on the illustration, when I realized that I in a haze of jolly stupor had eradicated everything remotely interesting in the original idea. It seemed as if the whole thing had traveled across the Atlantic and crashed in a barn in the Midwest, and what was worse: I hadn’t seen it coming! I had to scrap everything and start all over again.

Below: The inspiration from the Bo-Peep charachter in Toy Story is apparent, but is not translated to anything useful OR intersting. The illustration isn’t going anywhere. To the right: The evil face of despair.

Fast rewind to Bleak House and Pride and Prejudice. Panic was imminent as the deadline crawled closer. What I needed was some real british gloom, and I felt that heavy rain and dark clouds would put the illustration back on track again. Hoping it was possible to get into a state of “method illustration”, I put Wuthering heights by Kate Bush on repeat, cranked the volume to eleven, and proceeded to draw some new sketches. For the rainy weather I looked at Japanese woodblock prints for inspiration.

I selected (what I thought was) the best composition for the final illustration (above right, second from the top). All the main elements were done separately, and I tried to piece the whole thing together as best as I could in Photoshop.

Below: All the scanned elements before being assembled in Photoshop.

The illustration ended up as mumbo jumbo of lost and found ideas, failing to reach its potential. I cannot truly say I like the final result, but I have nevertheless kept it in the portfolio. As an illustration it is rather contrived and weak – yet I think it has something to it. To sum it up: In a herd of bright ideas, the black ones stand out. End of story.

To see the final illustration, click here.

On our first meeting I presented these sketches – pastels on coloured paper. Although well received, there were expressed concerns about the “crudeness” of the sketches – admittedly, there was a certain “art-schoolish” flair to them (which I thought were rather funny, at the time). Moreover, the editors wanted to show perfumes through the decades – as well as celebrity endorsement – thus establishing a need for a historical take on the subject.

This was the last shot at a typical still life rendering with pastels on coloured paper.

With the new brief in mind, I searched vintage perfume ads for inspiration – particularly the eminent work of  still-so-fresh fashion illustrator Rene Gruau (1909-2004).

After some tinkering, it became obvious that pastels on coloured paper were not going to give the contemporary shtick we were looking for. There was clearly a need for an edge, which (quite literally) led to the addition of paper cutting. Confident that the combination of scissor sharp shapes and natural textures would do the trick, I  proceeded to make some more elaborate sketches.

First coloured cut-outs: A bottle of  L’Eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake and a pretty Mitsouko-inspired face. Further down some tests with watercolour-blotches.

Sketches for the perfumes of the 80′s, drawing inspiration from the cut-out style of Grace Jones’ album art and quintessential 80′s artist Patrick Nagel.

As things go, the brief eventually changed – uncomfortable with the retrospective angle, the journalists dropped the initial idea, turning to the “here and now” of perfumery instead. This was a brilliant move – definitely all for the better – but it meant that I had to do some serious rethinking and also had to scrap most of what I had done so far. The illustrations would now focus solely on the experience of smelling and applying perfume, which opted for a much more contemplative, uncluttered design.

Below are the last sketches, many of which can be seen in the final editorial. It was particularly interesting to depict men smelling perfume, without being overly effeminate. Furthermore, all the perfume bottles from the different perfume houses had to move away from the front seat in order to give the single page illustrations enough breathing space. To see them up close: Click here.