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color/monochrome | Yoshitoshi ABe | 2010
★★★★★★★☆☆☆

At C78, Yoshitoshi ABe, one of my long-term favourite artists, released two doujinshi: Isolated City, a book of character design art interspersed with short stories, and color/monochrome, a small collection of digital sketches showing their progression from black and white outlines to the finished, coloured sketch. While almost two years have passed since the summer of 2010, neither of these books received very much press at the time, something which always saddens me with ABe’s work. I’m certainly going to download order Isolated City once I find a copy scanned that will economically ship to my address — I’ve been meaning to since the book was announced. color/monochrome, on the other hand, was released on iTunes this February, so, when I noticed it, I seized the chance. Please note, of course, that this means that this review is only of the book’s artwork and not of printing, binding, or paper quality.

The book contains, as the name suggests, 25 colour digital sketches, plus one or two monochrome digital and pencil progress sketches for each. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that, in the iPad edition, it’s not obvious that, to get to the monochrome sketches, you tap near the bottom of each colour sketch – I’d uncompressed the .ipa to get to said sketches before figuring that out. I’ve chosen, however, to review simply the art, not the app, so I’ll save my vitriol and/or bemusement over that one. Another caveat regarding the app: from photos of the physical book, it seems that it contains further WIP walkthroughs and commentary pages that ABe elected not to include in the digital edition. Considering that the digital edition costs under £2, I fully understand the decision to withhold bonus material, but, for that reason, true completists may wish to stick to the good ol’ tree-murderers’ version.

To somebody unfamiliar with the previews of this book floating around, the cover belies the contents a little – it’s by far the most polished piece in the book. The others are, in the literal sense, not in the humblebraggy sense so often used by artists to describe 173927392-hour practical magna opera, sketches. As sketches, however, some of these approach faultless. Even in the simplest preliminary doodle-forms, ABe’s exaggerated crosshatched shadows, paired with the damp parabolic surfaces of his nameless nymphs’ wide eyes, can still communicate the incredible depth of atmosphere as some of his more aggrandised pieces.

The sketches cover a wide range of themes, from scenic slice-of-life moments tinted by country road sunlight, through a hundred shades of contemplative isolation, to loosely ominous studies of struggle. I see a little Range Murata influence in one character’s design, and, in another, there’s a definite echo of Lain.

While some pieces seem more hurried than others, and many offer nothing particularly new or inspiring, this is a solid book of ABe sketches with a considerable selection of highlights. In many cases, I found myself preferring the monochrome illustration to the finalised form. I’d go so far as to say that the monochromes are where this book’s merit lies.

One final thing to note: over the past two years, ABe’s taken to using rather visible Photoshop texture overlays in his informal sketches. I can’t decide how I feel about that. What do you think?