Year three - mini workshops - Editorial illustration

Awesome illustrator Kelsey Heinrichs produces these epic images for various magazines such as Kerrang, Wired and The Wall Street Journal and many others.  These magazines aren't that high end but they don't come cheap either, from what I can see, most of these magazines are printed on thin paper. Kelsey makes these wonderful coloured images and the application of such is very well suited for these platforms.

There isn't a lot of texture to her work if any at all, Most of her elements seem to have 2-3 colour values and her complex images have 4-6 which isn't a lot, it's simple and effective. Looking through some of Kelsey's images I was able to find some of them in context from the magazines, Wired magazines paper looks quite thin and cheap and has a light bitty texture which actually picks up on some of Kelsey's images which works pretty well.

It should also be noted that Wired magazine has a digital version for tablets and kindles which obviously won't feature the thin paper texture, Kelsey's work is coloured digitally also so being able to see the work on a digital platform delivers her work effectively

Kelsey often leaves a lot of space for colour and allows that to do the talking and it is on these larger parts of the print that the texture of the paper can come through.

Ricardo Martinez is an abolsoute boss at cross hatching!
Fan boy moment aside, his work is incredible and visually stunning, he has been in the illustration game for a long time and has landed various jobs within the editorial world. Ricardo has worked for companies such as Dr Pepper and 7UP but his main art style as shown above is black and white ink work. These images pop perfectly on newspaper print purely because of their natural tonal value and the existing grey pages. The natural texture created by the hatching is easy to process and easy to read which is probably why he has landed so many jobs in this field.

Ricardo and his friend Nacho (yes that's actually his name) created the comic 'Goomer' and it has been a very successful and is still in print now i believe. Having a quite look through those comic images i can take similarities from Kelsey's work as far as colour went, everything had nice bold colours and was shaded simply, it picks up on the paper and reads well.


Seems like the cheaper the paper the simple the colours must be? Crosshatching is a smart way of adding shadows and tonal value without having to use too much colour if any at all. It's also a popular technique to use in newspaper cartoons. A lot of big illustrators use this style including Philip Harris and Chris Riddell.