Illustration

Illustration Week 6

On the second day of illustration we were drawing from taxidermy birds. There was several birds in the classroom in glass boxes and we started off drawing them with similar experimental techniques... left hand drawing, continuous line drawing and drawing without looking at the paper. These we did in our sketchbook as a sort of warm up. It gave us chance to have a go at drawing each bird before going onto the next task where we concentrated on one bird for several drawings.

The bird which I was drawing was a Tucan. We began by with ink drawing with a long stick, we then went on to tape a felt tip to the end of the stick and then also a paint brush using the ink again.  This was really difficult at first as it took away the control you would usually have. 

We were again focusing on spending most of the time looking at the bird itself rather than the paper, and we were urged to keep correcting whenever we felt it went wrong instead of just carrying on. On this drawing above I really struggled with the angle of the beak, on the first line drawing of it I had to constantly keep making alterations and it was really hard to get right.
We then went over the first drawing with another felt top colour and were urged to alter where we felt we went wrong. So on this drawing above you can see there is several attempts at getting the beak correct.

We then got some brown ink, sprayed the drawing with a bit of water and worked into it even more with the ink and using the long stick to draw with. 

On this drawing I think we started off drawing with brown ink. I felt I got the beak actually right on this one which was an achievement. After doing the line original line drawing we got another colour ink (blue) and worked on top using a brush... again taped to the long stick. 
I concentrated on the negative space below the bird with this colour and the tried to add some element of shadow. I really like how this looked because it gave the bird more definition and context and stopped it looking just like a flat drawing. Even though we didn't have much control I do really like the effect this had on the drawing. The really sketchy lines and how you can see the alterations I actually think looks really effective and nice. 

This one we started with green felt tip. Again you can see how certain parts went wrong and had to work back into it to get it correct. This drawing is done from a different angle, which it was a lot easier to get the beak right. 

We then worked on top of this drawing with inks and also oil pastel. I really like how you can still see the underlying green felt tip. I felt I went a little to heavy with shadow on this one, but I still quite like the overall image and the effect of the mixed media. 

The next day of Illustration we had to make our birds out of newspaper and paper as a 3D structure. I found this really difficult and very hard to get right, 3D definitely isn't an area I excel in. I didn't mind the outcome actually but I didn't feel it was the best representation of my bird. For the outside of the bird sculpture we used a cut up one of our previous drawings. 

We used our left over scraps of drawings to create a collage of the shape of our paper bird sculpture. We then worked into this with ink and emulsion. I didn't feel this worked out particularly well. I tried to add some context to the drawing by drawing in the lines of the ceiling but I think I did this a bit sloppy and didn't concentrate enough on how the lines of the ceilings actually were.  I do quite like the original collage though.

For the second drawing I decided to change how the paper bird was hung to alter to composition a little bit. We started this drawing by drawing with wax and then seeing how it resists to an ink wash. We then worked into the wax drawing with ink using a long stick to draw with. I really like how the piece looked at this stage. I attempted to bring into it the shadow below, colouring in the negative space a bit. We then worked into this with collage and emulsion again. 

I really like the end outcome of this drawing, I think it worked really nicely. The techniques themselves I think were really good to let you be really loose with your drawing and again makes you look at your subject a different way when your using collage. I really enjoyed the mixture of medias used and just being able to really experiment. 

Illustration

Dima Rebus

Dima Rebus is a watercolour illustrator that I found from thisiscolossal.com. His painting style and technique is really nice and each painting I've looked at of his i've just loved. But also his concepts, something is really captured in each his illustrations.

Such as this one below, it's really mysterious. Not only because it's obviously headless but the painting style,how the blending looks almost like smoke, it's quite dark and eery. 

 

This one below is called 'Money' and I think this is my favourite one by him. I love the colours used, it really just gives that coldness and again eeriness. It's quite unsettling. I really like on this one how the figures aren't fully painted and how the paint bleeds out into the background is really nice. It makes it look really foggy and adds to that coldness. The characters themselves are great too, they look really thuggish with the dark clothing, hats, bandages and serious expressions. As well as the ravens.

This fox one is another lovely one by him. It's great to compare this one and the one above. How the colours are a lot warmer. With the nice strong orange and redy tones and the cream background. I like how they are ganged together, curled round each other, protective of one another. How some of them are starting out sharply, others are yawning and others sleeping. It really captures the characteristics well.

Illustration

Ian Kim

Ian Kim is another artist found from Illustration Now. He is a californian illustrator who does illustrations, comics, paintings and motion design. I really like the line work in his illustrations. On his website he has a variety of different kinds of work. He even has some life drawings put on there, which just shows he's a great observational drawer, and you can see this also through his characters.

I just think his illustrations a really nice, crisp and clean. I love the sky backgrounds on these two. Theres a real kind of realistic look to his drawings too in a way, which I also quite like.

 

I love this quirky red carpet illustration. The colours are really nice and strong, and even though they are digitally coloured (I presume) you can still see drawing-like lines which is quite nice.

Illustration

Jörn Kaspuhl

Jörn Kaspuhl is another illustrator I found from Illustration Now library book. He's a freelance illustrator that has worked for several internation agencies, magazines, publishers, musicians and fashion labels. The below image is an example of one of his work for Benevolent. The reason why I picked this one in particular to blog was because I really like the two tone colour scheme. The album is called "The Rain and the Sea" just from the title I felt he'd really represented it well. But I thought it would be a good idea to actually have a listen to the music itself to see how well he's captured it. It's an acoustic band whose vocals are really soft and the music is quite melancholy. 

The cover has captured these elements nicely. By incorporating things such as the doves, the waves and the colour makes it visually appear quite soft and peaceful, Similar to the music. He's also Incorporated the clouds, the leaveless trees and the washed up boats which kind of portray a element of disruption and sadness. Which I think captures the album quite well. The songs seem to be quite deep and the title "The Rain and the Sea", makes me think of troubles, like 'troubled water' etc.  but he's brought this idea together nicely with a rather peaceful element as well. 

 

A lot of his work he likes to incorporate nature and animals and the interweaving of nature. The illustration below is another CD cover he's done. This is a great example of his animal illustration. A lot of his work is the unifying of animals and humans and this one below I really like. I think it's really interesting how he's layered the different birds among eachother in place of the mans hair. I also like how he's used simple black lines but filled areas in to add more definition. I didn't realise at first but even the right hand side is also birds in negative. I thought this looked really effective, as at first I thought it was hair, then saw the beaks and realised it was infact also birds.

These ones below are some other layered nature illustrations. These ones I'm not so keen on. I don't really like how busy they are I feel they're really hard to look at. So many different colours and so many different animals, characters and plants. I also feel some of the colours don't really compliment eachother as well as they could.

I do however really like the busy layered nature illustrations that are done with the two tone colour scheme. I think it's just the combination of heavy colour and busy subject together that doesn't work quite so well.

 

 

Illustration

Andrew Bannecker

To find some more illustrators that I'd not heard of before I thought it would be a good idea to go into the library and delve into their illustration books. I found the book Illustration Now, which had a wide variety of different illustrators, and I came across Andrew Bannecker. 
He's an 'award-winning' illustrator from Washington and his clients have included Starbucks, Nike, Coco Cola and Sainsbury's, among many others.

I think the reason I picked Andrew Bannecker is because I really like digital illustrations done on illustrator/photoshop and the likes. It's something I've been trying to teach myself over the past few years and my interest in it just keeps growing. I really like this one above with the shapes used and how the textures have been created and layered up. It's stuck to a nice tight colour palette and is  subtle and quite pleasant really. It incorporates nice simple shapes and the repetition used works nicely at the right hand side with the cluster of triangles.
 

  

 These above illustrations are similar. I love how on the left one these wave like shapes have been layered over each other in different opacity's, and how they've come up to a point not like  natural waves would. I think the combination of colours on this one makes it almost dream-like, I think it's because of the starry night sky and how the tides really look quite rapid and sharp but at the same time seem it seems so peaceful. The two illustrations above work nicely together as well. How the skies contrast in each one, like ones daytime and ones night. I like how it's a similar idea but done in a completley different way.

These above ones are examples he's done for clients. I always think it's interesting to compare commisioned work with someones own artwork.  It's clear to see there is some similarties. He's still encorporated some of his texute with the background on the bats for lashes poster and the background of the coca cola. Plus it's in a similiar vector style. The one thing that does differ a lot for obvious reasons is the colours. The coke adverts colours are a lot different from his other work, with the bright red and greens and of course the context differs a lot too. The bats for lashes poster is similar in colour scheme to his boat illustrations, how he's stuck to a nice simply scheme that's quite subtle and toned down.

Illustration

 David Litchfield

The next illustrator I've found just today is David Litchfield. This illustrator I found from Tumblr which I think is a great way to find both upcoming and professional artists. David Litchfield uses mainly traditional techniques such as pens, pencils, watercolours and coloured pencils. From what I gather he is a freelance illustrator and has appeared in magazines, children’s books, animations, on album covers, T-shirts and as part of marketing campaigns. 
He completed a personal project of an illustration a day for a year which you can find here: http://davidsdrawingaday.tumblr.com/

One of his recent projects that I like is one he's done for beano. On his blog he explains the process he goes through when doing a project like this. He creates several rough sketchy thumbnails. Then he begins drawing onto A3 or A4. Usually a bigger size than the actual image and draws each character on a separate piece of paper and colours. To avoid one thing going wrong and to make the whole piece more manageable. He then scans each character onto photoshop on different layers and sorts out the composition, cleans up the drawings a little bit and no doubt alters certain elements. 

These pictures of the piece below was taken from his blog, it's interesting to see that he drew the monkeys arms and body separate from one another!

Commenting on his drawings in general I really like his use of the traditional techniques. How he colours his drawings before altering them on photoshop I think is really interesting and looks really authentic. I think this technique is particularly good when doing children's illustrations. Kids love colouring and it is recognisable ... not in an untidy way, it still looks professional but there is a real kind of authenticity to it. On the illustration below I really love how vibrant the colours are. 

Illustration

 Deth P. Sun

When researching illustrators that appeal to me I had a look at a recent Now Then magazine that I picked up in town the other week. Now Then is a Sheffield magazine that features independent art, trade, music, writing and local news. It's written by members of the community not proffessionals and each issue picks an artist that is featured on the cover and throughout the pages, usually features an interview with the artist too which is great. Sometimes the artist is local others not but always it's someone pretty interesting (In my opinion).

The illustrator I found was Deth P Sun, whose illustrations are usually of cats in unusual adventures and scenarios. I got stuck actually picking which ones to feature on this blog, because all of them I find so cool. 

Simlar to Sara Fanelli I really like how Deth's illustrations have quite a limited colour palette. The colours are all really complementing to eachother and I like how he makes certain things just all one colour such as the one above the tree and the bellow plants are all in the grey colour yet the character, the leaves and other elements are in colour, emphasising these elements and ultimatly telling a story. 

Some of his drawings are generally just quite comical and others are really more engaging and get you wondering whats going on. Such as the one above the characters expression looks quite wary and he's carrying a lions head and has a sword. It gets you all suspicious, it's great. 

 I love this one above, the really exaggerated steam coming from the mug, the expression on the cats face and the big cuddley blanket. 

This one above seems to be one that's more simple and comical. I like how he keeps the character the same yet changes the colour slightly, such as this ones now in black and the previous ones were grey or teal. It's questionable whether these cats are all the same character or not actually. I'd love to see one of Deth P Sun's exebitions to see how these illustrations fit together sequencially actually and how they depict a full adventure.

Most of Deth P Suns illustrations are paintings, from reading his interview with Now Then I found out he uses high viscosity fluid acrylics, matte acrylics and medium viscosity acrylics. And with his drawings he uses a G Tec 4. I think it's really interesting to know what materials exactly certain artists use. Deth P Sun explains that he's really specific about the type paints, pens and brushes he uses and obviously most of his pieces have a similar finish and precision to them and the same materials are necessary to get the same outcomes and keep his work looking sequential.

Illustration

Ronald Searle

Another illustrator I really like the work of is Ronald Searle, who was as well a British Illustrator. Well known for his St Trinians illustrations. His work caught my eye straight away because of his use of what looks like pen/fine liner or some sort of ink nib drawings. They appear quite sketchy, he uses as well strong washes of ink. Which is a material I really like the look of, especially the combination of washes and pen. 

The image below is a great example of this. He's used a strong ink wash behind which emphasises nicely the pillar and the characters. He's also used the wash to pick out areas of shadow - not all areas just some, that I think really bring the drawing to life. I really like his variation of thick and thin lines too which makes his illustrations more lively. He has a very strong style which I also really like. You can see his almost all his characters follow this, such as the lady on the one below, his style is quite comical the emphasised nose with the small eyes and extremely exaggerated hat. His characterisation is great. 

  

When researching more about Robert Searle himself I really got quite engrossed. To find out he was a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese in world war II and documented his experience through drawings that he hid under mattresses of prisoners dying from cholera. Not only are these drawings that he would have quite probably been executed for if found but drawings that he no doubt was believing he wouldn't survive whilst drawing. He did survive luckily and so did astonishingly over 300 of his drawings. He used these drawings to depict what it was like living in the prison, to record history really. A quote on wikipedia by Searle said  "I desperately wanted to put down what was happening, because I thought if by any chance there was a record, even if I died, someone might find it and know what went on." 

The one above is a great example of the drawings he did. Even has the caption "These are the type of men who were responsible for the deaths of 13000 of our prisoners on the Thai-Burma Railway. Especially chosen for their brutality and worthlessness."
These drawings are great depiction's of character. When it comes to visual communication and observational drawing skills it's clear Ronald Searle excelled. These drawings are quite hard hitting really but really are great documentations of history. 

                                                                                                                                             The below drawing (left) I really like the use of the wash again, how he's picking out certain tones subltly. I really think it brings a simple line drawing to life.
Interestingly the one the the right below isn't ink washed. Now I don't know if this was Searles intention behind not adding a wash but really you could be interpreted on an allegorical level as the man depicted is struggling to live, lifeless, as if his life is being drained from him. So the lack of the colour wash could be because of his lack of life.

Illustration

Sara Fanelli

Sara Fanelli is an illustrator and artist from Florence. Her work is predominantly illustrations, children's illustrations, books and self-generated projects. 

What I really like about Sara Fanelli's work is colour palette. For most of her illustrations she uses a limited palette such as the one below is a mixture of the warm reds and oranges with the dark navy and cream colour all very complementing to one another. 

I also like her typography on the one below. How certain words are emphasised and not all the words are the same size.

The image above is from a book spread. What I like about this spread is how she's composed the page, it almost looks like a sketchbook with different ideas on. Her characters are very quirky and you can see how her work appeals to children, it's fun, colourful and unusual. What I also like about this one is the drawing of the pine cone, it shows she clearly has observational drawing skills. 

The above is a spread from her illustrations for the book Pinocchio, again I really like the limited colour palette used with just the browns and cream colour. I love how she's used opposing colour on each character as well, how the backdrop for the left one is the colour of the right one and vice versa. On the right hand side I love how the forest background is limited to just that little section and the rest is of the background is just a texture kind of thing. It really makes the character stand out and almost gives the impression of the characters both on a journey somehwere, they're not fully encorporated in the forest background because they're just passing so to speak. It's really quite clever.