As a food illustrator, painting and designing kitchen wall art or atmospheric food illustrations satisfies a need to visually share empowering philosophies about living foods. Fermented Radish threads the line between realism and magical realism. The stylized, watercolor kitchen wall art print looks scrumptious enough to eat in almost any decor!
Creative Brief
Fermented Radish, continues a collection of food illustration watercolor prints I started as part of an art journal series called “Everyday Life.” This specific watercolor painting, #6 in the collection, was created in a very thick altered book (like the majority of the paintings in this series). The idea for the artwork came to me from:
- A love of food, cooking from scratch, kitchen gardens and pickled food.
- Itching to paint another complex pickle illustration after a previous promising attempt. This time around, I would use a mason glass jar. At the time, I couldn’t find a ton of kitchen prints within that theme that I liked with this subject matter. This surprised me since there exists a zillion of fermentation enthusiasts and foodies out there who also love watercolor paintings.
- A need to perfect new techniques, I was learning, about building up a watercolor painting layer by layer, in a painstakingly, but ultimately rewarding, slow process.
For this watercolor painting, I wanted to spend more time painting rather then drawing. So, I kept the composition super simple. I based the layout on a wonderful photo I cut out from a magazine. I tracked down the photographer and promptly ask for permission to use it. He was kind enough to agree!
After that, I tweaked the layout a bit. I turned it into a drawing that could stand on its own as a final sketch. From that point on, it was off to the races!
CLIENT: Personal Project
PROJECT TYPE: Watercolor wall art print for kitchen decor
DESIGNER’S NOTES
Between research, ideation, material and final rendering, the entire creative process took seven active hours to complete over two days, working approximately 4 hours a day. Part of the reason the process was so fast, was because Fermented Radish was the continuation of the “Everyday Life,” collection an already existing, very colorful body of work, started back in 2018.
The central themes of the “Everyday Life” collection revolve around Pantry, Fridge and Memory. All of the sketchbook research, art journal color studies and thinking parts were already done.
And so, I mainly relied on these source documents for ideas to iterate on the existing collection and its stylistic direction. I looked at my list and the watercolor illustrations I'd already completed and thought that fermented foods was a logical next step.
DESIGN PROCESS
Process overview
The collage below demonstrates some of the source material and techniques that eventually led me to "Fermented Radish." This includes: urban sketching, thumbnail concept sketches, notebook explorations, color and composition studies, mood boards and reference photos.
Pencil sketch Final Drawing
The pencil sketch was drawn directly in my altered book art journal. It evolved, inside that journal, from the rough sketch stage to the final drawing. I bypassed the more systematic, approach I usually take: do several concepts in a sketchbook and select one or two to develop. Create a rough sketch at the final size. Use several layers of tracing paper to develop and refine the artwork to the final resolved drawing.
Final Art
Once the pickle illustration was finished, the art literally burst with a ton of color and character, perfect for editorial illustration or packaging.
SVG Vector Art
The cleaned up version of "Fermented Radish" also makes a painterly pickled food vector graphic assets that complements a variety of backgrounds.
Before & After
PUBLISHED ART
Popular Wall Art Home Decor Shop
These days, "Fermented Radish," has proven to be a popular watercolor print at art fairs. It then became a wonderful addition to, a small but growing, kitchen decor wall art collection, solely focused on food and recipe illustrations. Foodies, fermenting enthusiasts, foraging adventurers tend to love this atmospheric watercolor illustration.
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ART LICENSING APPLICATIONS
Repurposed Book Cover for Meal Planner
As of November 14, 2021, this illustration is now gracing the cover of a beautifully illustrated and practical “Weekly Recipe Planner." I designed the meal planner out of a need to save time and money when meal prepping.
I wrote about this FANTASTIC, meal planner in this post HERE.
BUY THIS WEEKLY MEAL PLANNER ON AMAZON NOW
A Perverse Exercise
Since I stomach radishes only whey they are pickled, I thought that all in all this was a perverse illustration exercise. However, I confess that since then, I’ve evolved to discover the surprising ways I can use radishes in recipes and in the kitchen garden!
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Other pantry and food investigations for this piece:
- Coffee Cup and Cupcakes
- Eggs and Coffee
Deep right into The Food Illustration Portfolio Page.
Do you have a question about an illustration, a design or an art project you've seen in the shop? Contact me here.
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Please note that I’m slowly migrating my old studio website, Patricia Jacques Illustration, to United wanderlust. I’ll be updating all the links but for now some of the link direct to my old artist blog, Dreaming into Being blog. Until I get everything in one place, feel free to contact me at United Wanderlust or over there.
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Other Related News
"Fermented Radish" and really, every piece in the "Everyday Life," collection of wall art, inspired the next big collection I'm currently working on, “Wild Dining Illustrated.” These are exciting recipe illustration inspired from foraging and kitchen garden ingredients.
I believe a few of them would look fantastic on kitchen walls! Stay tuned. As I complete and document them, I may post the finished pieces on my blog and even add them to the shop as prints or original art.
One of them is "Fermented Pine." The first published print sold this past November at the MCAD art fair. There’s a limited number of signed prints now available in the art shop.
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