Agnes Decourchelle

Artist’s Career

Agnes Decourchelle is a French free-lance illustrator. She graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2001, and the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. She decided to become a Free Lance Illustrator in 2002 as well as a drawing teacher in 2010. Also, she has worked for magazines and trends publicity such as Marks & Spencer. Decourchelle mainly creates illustrations of people by using different colours in different tones (not black) which give her illustrations a soft and warm atmosphere to it.

Links With Own Work

For my Fashion Illustration project I have studied Agnes Decourchelle and have done similar illustrations that use the same style as her work. Her work is directly drawn with watercolours or colour pencils without any prior drawings. The colours in her illustrations are blended together using a dégradé effect. I like her work because it’s diverse and increases your originality of colour experimenting.

 

In my opinion, this illustration portrays a family gathering due to the expressions on their faces as well as the majority of the warm use of colours as well as the specifically chosen warm colours blended well together using watercolours. As well as that, this illustration does have a combination of warm and cold colours with only a small sector of the illustration (the drinks) being cold colours to depict the season of Summer. Through observation, I can infer that Decourchelle’s work is really detailed, sketchy and bright and well put together by blending the colours. 

 

 I like this image due to its simplicity of the face of a lady; just by adding a few warm tones on her face makes the image very eye catching. I believe here she has used colour pencils as the consistencies of the colours are thicker than the water colour illustration on the left.  She has used a variety of shades, and highlights certain areas (especially the right) to draw attention to the features of the face Half of the illustration involves warm colours and the other half uses cold colours depending on the reflection of light.

I like Agnes Decourchelle’s work because she has the ability to make even the simplest aspect of an environment become very eye catching by just using water colours or colour pencils; also, she directly sketches out the illustration and produces a detailed yet sketchy looking illustration. This is what instantly attracted me to her work.