“Icecream Girl” by Arcobale_6 aka アルコポルカ

It’s been a long one. After reviewing a critical mass of illustrations, I’ve been obsessed with avoiding redundancy. Let’s be honest, the artists that I have the pleasure of deconstructing are amazing and in many ways above my paygrade. I strive to, somewhat unrealistically, make quantum leaps in all of my pieces, which certainly does not make creating easier. With these artists having such solid grasps on the essentials of attractive illustrations, it’s really hard to avoid continually expressing my stupor.

After spending some time soul-searching and trying to figure out what, if anything, makes my work valuable I stumbled across a number of ideas. Listening to people like Rick Rubin, Proko, Robert Greene and Naoki Saito, I’ve gained new insight into the nature of creative expression. The uniqueness that I’ve been overly focused on isn’t something to be neglected, but it also isn’t something to be forced. My new objective with my work is to articulate as well as I possibly can, the things I appreciate that other people don’t see. Rather than emphasizing increasingly esoteric works or techniques, which I also happen to love, I think my most meaningful contribution comes from deconstructing the elements that stand out to me, and making a compelling case for why they might be important.

Arcobale, bless their soul, is an artist that I stumbled across on Twitter a number of months ago. They graciously gave me the go ahead towards the beginning of last December (which tells you how long I’ve been sitting on this). Although I find their work quite enjoyable and comforting like hot cocoa on a winter day, my creative mindset hasn’t been quite aligned with my enthusiasm. Rather than being plagued by writer’s block, it’s not that I had nothing to say but that I wanted my article to capture what Arcobale’s work makes me feel in contrast with other works. As a proper middle-finger to perfectionism, I know that I will fail to reach my impossible personal standards, but I hope I do this heartwarming illustration some bit of justice.

Although this piece may now be lost to the never-ending scroll of the Twitter feed, it stood out to me among Arcobale’s works for a number of reasons. It would certainly be presumptuous to call this illustration a “magnum opus” but it in many ways embodies the common threads of Arcobale’s style while also having many unique elements. The first outstanding quality that caught my eye was the beautiful compliment between the soft rendering and painting style used, in tandem with a subtle retro filter effect. I’m agnostic to the specific techniques used to capture the effect here, but I find this piece has a really nice comforting affect to it.

The harmony of color was the next thing that really pulled me in. There is a soft contrast between the yellow hues in the irises, the blueish whiteness of the hair, and the oranges in the hairband and ribbon. The wonderful detail of the blues and soft orange-y pink shades in the skin gives everything a cool feel with the implication of coldness, while the overall confluence of elements makes things feel warm and vibrant. You can really see the attention to detail and the understanding of color and light that Arcobale has. As some of you will know, humans largely interpret the objective color of something by contrasting it to the colors around it. The harmony of color is so good that it’s ambiguous what each of the colors actually are objectively by themselves. Is the lightest part of the hair light blue or white? There are many ambiguities created in parts of the skin and her dress that have this quality as well. Certainly eye-candy in the best way possible. If I move my attention to the less saturated parts of her clothing in the lower waist area, it becomes ambiguous again what some of the objective colors are. Is that orange, green and blue? Are there some purples or yellows in there? The disparity between our objective ideas about color and the role colors take on in this illustration in a relative sense really puts this painting in its own universe.

Now of course, I have to talk about what I love in the shape choice and composition work. The pose and gesture coupled with the attire and blush in the cheeks really helps to create that innocent and cute vibe this piece gives off. I fucking love the shape work in the hair, really adding to the ice-cream motif. The bangs sort of shaped like soft serve dripping down when the ice-cream is still cold and firm. Then the back of the hair with the really rich swirling motion – a fantastic excuse to go a lil’ crazy with brushwork, and meshes nicely with the theme. Of course none of this could be complete without sprinkles. What kind of monster doesn’t like a good sprinkle with their ice-cream?

Now a few smaller, but not lesser details that elevate everything. Notice the gentle hatching in the veil to the side of the character’s face, the texturing on the orange fabric around the upper arm and the feeling of volume around clothing wrinkles and the cuff opening. The light and shadow, as we mentioned color and light before, also works nicely with this pose, by creating a very natural foreground and background. This is actually a pretty major element. The shoulder and part of her face closer to us is the foreground and then there is a gradation from the shadow side of her face, to the shadowed side of her body. Very sharp way to create more depth and spark interest in an illustration. There is also a cast shadow on the background for the extra flavor. Seemingly minor, but very important stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what emotions and stories this piece evokes for me as I sit here studying it and a number of things come to mind. The more I look at the background blues and the retro-y vibe I get, I kind of think of older movies and hot air balloons with the vibrant blues of the sky and the contrasting orange-y reds of the balloon. That and this piece is just damn adorable. It’s really the sort of thing that just makes me quietly happy every time I look at it, like an old picture of someone as a kid smiling ear to ear.

Not exhaustive, and certainly not comprehensive, but I really enjoyed this one. Thanks again Arcobale for giving me the pleasure of reviewing your art piece, learned a lot. Second thanks to my readers for putting up with my sus creative schedule and pedantry. Normally even a captive audience can only barely stomach my rambling. Hope you find something you like about this piece as much as I did. Be well and go check out Arcobale’s stuff, I don’t think you will be disappointed.