This is about researching illustrators’ work in terms of style, content and use of medium eg whether pencil, water colour, paint, gauche, collage, pen & ink or application of technology – in terms of digital drawing/photography & painting. Or use of a variety of mediums.
To work through this exercise I am referring to the book “The Illustrator” 100 from around the world. This book introduces illustration as being ” more free and varied than ever – from paper to screen, books, packages, clothing and restaurants – This book celebrates the quality, diversity, intensity of the work”.
There is a massive collection of work however I am choosing to look at portraiture mainly. I consider that in selecting one theme (portraiture), I can then compare use of materials and designs within a particular subject matter.
So starting with work by Katarina Kuhl, a German illustrator. She works quite directly from subject matter ie books, films either real or fiction, rarely sketching before hand and is “very interested in the beauty that lies beneath the surface”. These portraits are as fine art prints with pencil & chalk in digital:-
There is something almost Elizabethan in the rendering with the high ruffled collar and decorative jeweled embellishments which seem to reflect in this lady’s eyes. The eyes are glassy and watery. There is a mystery here of melancholy eg. provision is present and yet there is a deep longing” .
The pen work is sharp and detailed allowing for precision and the chalk gives light to the hair. This seems to be where past and present meet. Historical dress with a modern madonna in highlighted hair. It is a story of contrasts. Dark,light. Status yet poverty of mood. Historical yet modern. There is the youth of an unlined brow, yet the creases in the shoulders of the dress echo the neck shading and sallow cheek and deep set eyes.
Here is another be-jeweled lady by Katarina Kuhl,:-
Another interesting expression that you would not necessarily expect in a portrait, almost sullen and angry or disappointed. Here again the contrast in mood with the beauty of the figure and clothing. The hierarchy in the image is designed through colour with the red lipstick contrasting against the purple costume, the unusual head dress and sparkly buttons on the shoulders. All wonderfully composed and so arresting The figure appears composed yet with great turmoil of emotion hidden and communicated by the intensity of the gaze which is further “distorted” and emphasized by the large spectacles.
Research into Illustrator digital design programmes:-
I feel is important when analysing the work of illustrators to have some understanding of the different effects produced via digital technology. So I am researching the difference between computer packages ie photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Indesign.
Photoshop: produces images in Raster form graphics called Bitmap made up of dot matrix data structure (ie a mosaic grid of coloured dots). These small dots are called pixels.
If you zoom into an image on photoshop you can see the actual pixels (lots of individual squares) making up the image. However when sizing and re-scaling in this way, the line edges become blurred and lack clarity. So there is loss of quality. This is termed pixelation
However photoshop is a popular commercial software package renowned for its photo-editing capabilities eg brightness, construct & add effects etc.
Adobe Illustrator: produces images in Vector graphics based on mathematical equations. Therefore when you zoom to enlarge a vector image there is no loss of quality. The line edges and shapes are maintained. Lines and curves remain smooth . ie the same shape no matter what size, well defined and not blurred. So vector graphics is useful for technical drawing where lines remain clear and do not break up. However it cannot modify images easily and is not advanced in photo-editing. Adobe illustrator is good for designing logos, illustrations, business cards .
In-design: is a publishing tool. It provides layouts for combining text and images and logos. You can incorporate for example edited photos from photoshop and logos & drawings from Adobe Illustrator into In-design to make eg posters, newsletters or magazine articles.
Returning to the portraiture and looking at a completely different style: –
Much softer, less detailed. I’ve chosen this because here there is hardly any detail in the costume, only broad outline strokes. This is the work by Maria Herreros (born in Valenca 1985, studied at the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2007) with a postgraduate degree in professional illustration in 2009. She tends to work in watercolours. In the painting above you can see the broad brush marks. And the white paint on the face has almost been plastered onto the rose pink background. It appears a much more relaxed approach than the previous digital work described however very confident. Here contrast is given not so much in emotion and image, however in use of colour – the stark blue eyes against the orange eyebrows and head of hair. There is some distortion in image with eyes set far apart, recessive chin to over developed lips. The high collar and backward glance give a quiet look of disdain.
Here is another work by Maria:-
The blue eyes stand out again yet in a friendlier face. The slightly warped, wobbly feel is achieved here by the enlarged right side of the face which does not align quite with the edge above the glasses. This is clever in indicating the magnifying effect of lenses. The upper lip lines don’t align with the nostril. This gives a sense of movement. You can feel the weight of resting the head on the hand pushing the lower part of the face to the right. I like the painterly quality of this portrait. The bright white finger nail, the use of colour in the shading. The layering and deepening of colour tones within a limited palette.
Moving on to Bodil Jane whose work is entirely watercolour pencil and ink. Bodil is a duitch illustrator who studied at Rotterdam and the School of Design in Copenhagen
The above image is for a magazine cover. It is very exotic with a more varied palette. It is almost like a coloured-in line drawing. At first it appears as flat imagery with little shading however the depth is in the composition with a definite foreground (portrait) and background (green leafy canvas). The ink link markings are thin and it is their closeness or distance which indicates textures. The smooth facial skin is free of lines, the red cloth has a few parallel ones, while the green canvas is textured. The horizontal textured green background contrasts to the vertical black lines in the red cloth. The various shades of the same colour green in the background give way to the varied red, orange, pinks in the foreground. This time attention is brought to the face, not by the colour of the eyes, but by the whites of the eyes emphasized by the two white flowers in the hair.
While on the subject of exotic I am including here designs by Catalina Estrada, a Colombian born illustrator based in Barcelona since 1999. She initially studied graphic design and then in illustration since 2005. Her work is inspired by the natural world and Latin-American folklore. Catalina tends to work through digital media. Here are vector drawings:-
And Wallpapering design:-
You can see they are very accurate, colourful with repeating pattern. This is about two dimensional patterning which is very effective.
Here is a portrait illustration in a more “sketchy” style. The red “scribbles” give a sense of freedom and sense of movement to the head.
This is more impressionistic than accurate. This is personal work (Pencil and ink) by Connie Lim, an American illustrator who graduated from fashion design and Marketing in 2013 (Central St Martins, London). She tends to work in polychroma colour pencil with a gothic influence. I really like the use of colour here, delicate hews of blue, red and yellow seeping through the black. It is very pensive & sensitive, like a person in mourning with the beauty of memories or future hopes breaking through. The dappled, application of ink on the lower of the sleeves, gives them a lightness of bounce, whilst the heavy dense black of the shoulders implies a sense of responsibility too. The weight of grief -“weight of the world on the shoulders” always there however gradually lifting as spring slowly returns after winter.
Here is male illustrator Robert Nippoldt, born in Germany in 1977. He illustrated a book about the roaring twenties. This is an illustration from the book entitled “Pearls”.
This is black ink, digital. It is about light and shade and a stunning illustration of pearls shimmering in the dark. There is no detail in the head-dress yet you know they are feathers by the fringed edging. The perspective is interesting. You feel you are looking up as the lady in the portrait is doing so too.
The illustrator Hanoch Piven graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1992. He create caricatures in collage (a more abstract process). This piece is “What are Prime Ministers Made of”
However I like to just observe it as a collage of a head-cook keeping things in order in the kitchen and giving instructions.
It is so imaginative and full of metaphor and symbols – the chicken leg for a nose which did not quite register when I first looked at this. The lengthy arm of a wooden spoon being brandished about. The blue and white stripes – obviously well thought through to represent the blue and white standard crockery. The purse as a skirt pointing to the cook’s economy & accounting in feeding the household. I can see here how a collage and a mood board do have a connection in some respect.
Much of the distortion is in the over-sized head (in comparison to the tiny body) which indicates power, noise and domination over all the small articles around (miniature bottles and saucepans). She is standing high above the shelves confident and supported by the traditional female roles (family, cooking, knitting, budgeting ). She knows who she is and has the means now to raise her head above the everyday and use her voice to power herself forward from a place of safety where she has gained experience in the environment (kitchen), status and a measure control . Her steel wiry hair also adds strength to the image. This is about potential and social climbing out of the everyday, not just where politicians develop from, but from where many ideas may form in debate and discussion around a checked table cloth be it a home, cafe, restaurant or gathering.
This is also about provision, once you have the basic needs, you can build. It signifies the Vote for Women. It respects the tradition of the past and the growth of female opportunity above and beyond.
I have so enjoyed exploring these illustrators and their portraiture.
It has helped to appreciate the variety in style in one theme, different use of materials, use of light/dark, colours, palette, tones and composition. It is quite freeing to see so many varied ideas allowing for plenty of diversity in expression and form.
For the next part of the exercise I choose a visual I created and render it using the same materials as a chosen artist. This is the visual I shall use:-
So then I searched through the book “The Illustrator” for those with a seaside theme:-
and came across two I really like:-
Dani Garreton (South American) and Sara Paglia (Italian),
This seagull by Dani Gerraton is drawn in pencil and the red/blue stripes in acrylic. Here you can appreciate the detail in the drawing especially the feathers towards the tail, the denser markings for underside shading and areas left blank as an almost outline eg upper seagull body and head. This leads to the hat which is completed entirely as a line drawing and is therefore easily distinguishable from the seagull’s more detailed frame. There are lots of gaps in the design, between the wide coloured acrylics which gives a sense of the spacious sea and sky. The choice of cold blue colour with the red (hot colour) indicates the heat of a sunny day with the cooler sea. You can only see the seagull’s legs indicating it is standing in water. The upper red brush strokes become narrower like rising heat and bring attention to the gull’s head. The red lines do not cross the front of the gull’s body which helps to bring it forward out of the picture and so gives depth to the image.
The work by Sara Paglia is completed in ink and digital. You can see the colours are laid on precisely with no brush strokes seen:-
The ink work is very detailed, the palette limited (blue, red, green). The white rabbit out of Alice of Wonderland. The male of the rabbit balanced by the femininity of the roses.
The rabbit is held up by the flowers which lifts and supports as a sense of positivity.
So too in this image there is movement and buoyance depicted by the birds and flowers above holding up the whale by threads
So here is my work in response to Dani Garreton’s style although choosing colours blue (for the sea) and yellow (for the sunflower):-
However it seems to lack any meaning giving the impression the sandal is underwater. So some experimentation is necessary. Instead of applying the acrylic paint with a brush, I paint a piece of card and press it onto the image. This gives more texture and creates interest. More colour is added. In this image I really like the way the blue has a more bubbly effect to give the idea of water, It does not matter if the paintwork is uneven or a bit messy as this is the seaside ie freedom, space, holiday:-
Now I trial a brighter pink and two layers of water, almost like taking a paddle:-
However the images above still lack depth so I decide to leave a gap in the paintwork for the entire sandal strap and this helps to lift the toe of the shoe up. I am following the technique in Dani’s work where he has left blank areas to bring the front of the bird forward. The colours are also deeper:-
Some of the detailing has been lost, so I have another go changing the colours and adding a little blue-green for the beading below the sunflower jug.
When I first started this trial of Dani’s work it was with the intention of a final pictorial outcome. However now I realise that one and all of these examples are THE complete piece. They are all different and each one of interest and relative to each other as comparisons of different effects. It is not simply paint lines across a drawing to create a finished piece. I have learned that it is much more involved that that. It needs to be quite carefully thought through to deliver a message eg, is the sandal to be above or below or partial emerged in the water line, what kind of colour to use, how textured, how deep the colour to have impact or lighter to let the pencil/pen work to show through. Do the paint lines go straight across the image or leave gaps and if so where to let a design show, give space or add 3 D dimension. So none of these examples are the “end”one , they are all journeys through ideas of a theme.
It has been lovely to do this during a hot spell of August weather and feel near to a beach and cooling water.
Another example where the deep pink/red gives attention to the sandal :
Now for the style of Sara Paglia:-
I find this much easier, not because the style is less imaginative, but rather because there appears to be less decision making involved. I choose to place sunflowers where Sara has roses and depict the flying birds which are provided. First I state with ink and water colour before embarking on any digital work. The pale colours are used for the shoe and sea and brighter ones for the flowers and birds as Sara has done in his work of the rabbit and whale. The overall impression is a light summery feel:-
Reference:
Heller, S & Wiedemann (Editors), (2019), The Illustrator (100 Best from around the World), Taschen. Koln.
Adelaide Art 