Illustration; likes and influences

As a regular 'flicker through' of the Saturday Telegraph Review supplement, I have found it a good source of examples of illustration and illustrators.

I recently became interested in the work of Wesley Merritt an ST Review regular. I like the depth of feeling or meaning that he can exude with what appears, at first sight, to be an economy of line detail and colour.
Me makes clever use of the empty space as well as the subject detail to deliver a message. If there was a style that i would happy to follow it would be Wesley's

You can enjoy his work by visiting his site here: 'Merrittocracy'

Also From the ST Review I came across James Hill 1930 - 2004. Described as One of Canada's most talented illustrators. Fiction, book covers, portraits; also a landscape painter. And created excellent illustrations for the Anne of Green gables books.

The illustration that he did for a short story shown below, I think; is illustration at its best. You get the idea for whole story in one excellently crafted piece. The angry grey colouration of the character the clenched fist the angry pink colour in contrast with the coolness of the pigeon - brilliant!

I have already stated a great liking of Edward Bawden's work initiated from the very first exercise of the course, and now have several books on his work. And a limited edition print. The national collection of his work is held at The Higgins Bedford. The Higgins has recently reopened after complete refurbishment. Its on my list of visits for 2014

I recently purchased a limited edition poster print by James Brown a print maker in Spittlefields East London, not realising that he is also a working illustrator; his illustration work I find equally as engaging as his poster designs.

In a style somewhat reminiscent of Edward Bawden

Researching Melvin Bragg for the editorial illustration exercise I discovered the work of Phil Disley and used his Eccolodges illustration above for reference in the same exercise. His web site is excellent

I have also through the course taken pointers or used examples from: Jessica Rae Gordon Jessica's Blog

In the Tools and Materials Project I selected, looked at and admired the work of Darren Hopes, Carly Allen-Fletcher and Lee Woodgate

For the final assignment I used pieces by Chris Wahl as reference examples of the Pop Art style.

A special mention for the Folio Society, I recently purchased a book as a present and it led me to discover the great patronage of talented illustrators that they have, the particular example Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's was illustrated by Karen Klassen each one is an illustration tour de force. If I could create stuff like this I would more than happy.

Assignment 5 'Seven days'

7 Days in Havana

Googling the term '7 days' produced a reference to the film 7 Days in HavanaIntended to be 7 stories with a cultural reference point. On reading a brief synopsis and given the fact that each day is in itself a short film by a different director; I am quite keen to give this subject some consideration with a view to making this film the basis of the final assignment.

Firstly; get hold of the DVD

First off I sat down and watched the film with a sketch pad and pencil. I noted key words, themes and anything that I thought worth noting. I expected that during the exercise I would be reviewing the film regularly; So I didn't have to be too concise straight off

I guess it was akin to brain storming

There are a collection of posters one for each film within the film, three of which are shown below. I think they are excellent designs but to my mind don't express the nature of the film. Except maybe for Ritual. I intend to attempt to capture the atmosphere and illustrate the title of each piece.

I have decided that I am going to illustrate in a pop art strip style and see it as an alternative marketing strategy. In the form of an A3 poster.

More watching and sketching; in certain respects it felt quite aimless at times, but doing something whilst watching and thinking about the story lines, characters and certain scenes could only be to the good.

By this point I had stopped jotting down key words. I felt that as I got into each piece I didn't need to rely on any other stimulus, I could just review scenes to evolve ideas. I wanted to avoid just ending up with illustrations that were in effect stills of the film but I saw no problem with combining characters and scenes in a condensed way.

I started sketching some thumbnails

Exploring possibilities...

I wish I could say that I methodically went through each day in an orderly fashion, however this is not the case as I flitted backwards and forwards through the film sequences.

I have found a way to capture and save screen shots when viewing the DVD through my notebook. This is going to speed up the process as I can scan the film and grab reference material at will.

Some of these sketches are oversize thumbnails to test framing some are attempts at catching a particular expression or view.

I have now accumulated my collection of designs and the plan is to make an outline drawing of each on tracing paper then scan to import into the Procreate app to add colour. This will be the basis of my client visuals

As I haven't previously given any sense of sequence perhaps this is an opportunity

Monday - El Yuma

After several attempts at sketching this face and not capturing, I felt, the character I printed off a frame capture and traced a line drawing

Tuesday - Jam session

Wednesday - The temptation of Cecilia

Thursday -Diary of a Beginner

Friday - Ritual

Saturday - Bitter Sweet

Sunday - The Fountain

Given some treatment in Procreate my client visuals..

At this point I had fully intended to render the designs again in the final medium of choice, probably water colour, but having yet again found myself with very little time left before the deadline, decided to rework the client visual files and prepare the final design in Procreate.

This plan worked up to a point. I was able to paste the panels to form something of a design but had to split the 7 into two. procreate is not really a paste up tool. I wanted to indicate the relevant day within each illustration, the only way I think I could achieve this is to put it into Photoshop; I can also amalgamate the 7 into one design of the required size. This was the first time that I had thought about the positioning of each panel, except to say that, originally I had had it in mind it would be one long strip. I guess that this could have been something that I could have worked out on paper before hand.

Having come to a decision of final placing I could see that aside from my images there seemed too much dead white space. I recalled a picture of some of the grand architecture in Havana, similar to that used on the DVD cover. I used an effect filter to lose some of the detail and change it to a halftone then used the photocopy filter in PS and reduced the opacity, to create a backdrop.

On the whole I am pleased with the results. If not slightly disappointed that I couldn't recreate the dotted shade tone, common in the Pop art style. If I had any criticism of myself I feel there are several key areas where a little more application and less thinking time wouldn't go amiss. Again as throughout the course I feel I have struggled against a lack of technical ability or experience with certain media; this leads to reduced scope when considering design, execution and finish. even in this last assignment there was an amount of experimentation going on even up to the final design.

I certainly feel that some painting and or mixed media tuition, experimentation, would be beneficial if I were to think about progressing with illustration in the future.

Here are are links to the albums of images used for reference:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Educational Strip - Puberty

what's happening to my body? its all going mad!!! :(

I did a lot of reading about puberty. Hoping it would stimulate some ideas.

Brainstorming took the form of playing with words and images

I thought of spots, mood swings the teenage frown etc

I kind of decided to avoid the kind of cartoon character with the usual fig leaves and red faced embarrassment. Although I did try out one briefly but it had certain drawbacks

What I really wanted to do was a kind of pop art style strip

I found a contact sheet of images. I have lost the reference to the page they came from so not sure who it is. But for some of the poses and expressions could illustrate

I sketched a few I selected as the strongest

When I was researching the subject, I came across some graphic representations of growth hormones the type that are produced by the pituitary gland lick starting puberty

Perhaps I can incorporate the pattern in my design...somehow.

Now to have a go at putting my sketches in to a strip context. I am going to trace a simple line around four selected.

To add the text I download an app for the iPad called Graffiti. You can also put images through a filter; I try out an idea

I find it handy to quickly add and position text to a design but it's bit of a cop out just to leave with a single background colour.

I have a look through some more pop art style examples and decide to colour accordingly by way of a client visual

And for the single character illustration