The Art of Feefal

Practical info

Author: Linnea Kikuchi
Genres: Non-fiction
Sub-genres: Art
Publication year: 2022
Edition: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-912843-50-3
Blurb: Be surprised, charmed, and intrigued by the unique work of Linnea Kikuchi (AKA Feefal), whose 1 million Instagram followers enjoy her surreal yet utterly believable creations. In this brand-new collection, she guides us through classic pieces, never-before-seen works, and tutorials crafted specially for the book. From early influences to her current workflow, Feefal’s captivating world is presented in this beautifully produced hardback volume.

Personal info

Why I picked it up: This was one of the batch of 5 artbooks I bought. I had known about Feefal for a long time and liked her art, so I wanted her book.
Status: Finished
Progress: 152/152 pages
Started: 18-09-2024
Finished: 21-09-2024
Rating: 5/5 stars
Reread count: 0
Overall opinion: I’ve always thought her art was beautiful and interesting and unique in subject matter. It’s cool to read about the mind behind those subjects. She has some interesting mixed media techniques. There are a lot of things she says that I relate to, like hating showing people your art in person or loving working on line art. Or when she writes about going to school for fine art and hating it that everyone around her thinks all art should have some profound meaning behind it or else it’s awful and soulless. Why is art looking nice and pleasing to the eye not enough? Even her teacher picking up an art book that she brought of one of her favourite artists and tear it apart in her face about how soulless it is, like Jesus Christ.

Then there are other things that I don’t relate to. Like something insignificant like struggling with digital art (I started with digital art very early in my art journey, she clearly didn’t). But also more serious things, like how she built her career. The tone she has about social media and building an audience feels very outdated. She has the attitude of ‘as long as you just keep posting, your people will find you!’ And that’s just not true anymore. It makes sense she thinks that way, she found her audience during the time that that was still true. But these days it comes off a little out of touch. I’d say that’s the only negative about this book.