Star, Branch, Spiral, Fan: Learn to Draw from Nature’s Perfect Design Structures

True beauty is found in nature, making this the perfect sketch book for your art inspiration!

As if being responsible for dazzling sunsets and the aurora borealis were not enough, nature is also guardian to the universal principals of design. With mathematical perfection, its recurring structures seem to magically adapt as they show up in hundreds of ways: the radial star at the center of snowflakes, fruits and flowers, and the arms of starfish; spirals at the heart of nautilus shells, unfurling plants, and swirling storm systems.

Borrowing the beauty of nature’s forms can help you create beautiful artwork. Observing the structure of nature’s forms can help you to be a better designer. The inspiration is limitless. Nature’s design magic is a balancing act found in its perfect ratios. The sections of this sketchbook--Star, Branch, Spiral, and Fan--focus on four of those disceptively simple design principles and why they work. Author/artist Yellena James uses her own nature-based drawings to guide readers toward looking closely at each design form and the places where it occurs. Readers will discover ways to use each form in their own artwork, realistically, abstractly, or as motifs in repeat borders and patterns. In a non-academic fashion, the text explains nature’s beautiful balances, and the art of using them when you draw and design.

Yellena James grew up and attended art school in Sarajevo, BiH. At the age of 18 she moved to the U.S. After gaining her BA in painting and graphic design at UCF, she eventually made her way to Portland, OR. Preferring pens, inks, markers and acrylics, she combines complex abstract forms into dazzling images which take on lives of their own. Her colorful arrangements of organic shapes and tangled lines are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi. Each intimate world she creates seems to posses its own ethos and its own special ability to radiate emotion.

James has participated in shows around the U.S. and overseas, including: solo exhibitions at Giant Robot (San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA), the Here Gallery (Bristol, UK), the Hijinks Gallery (San Francisco, CA) and more. She also has done illustration work for Anthropologie, Crabtree and Evelyn, Crate and Barrel, Relativity Media and many others (see client list below).