Okay so whilst conducting some artist research, my friend mentioned that I should take a look at Alberto Cerriteno and what a fantastic suggestion that was indeed.
This man blew my mind instantly!
I have never really seen artwork like this before, it was hard to tell what was digital and what was natural. There was a really heavy focus on decorative textures and I had never really thought about applying texture in this way.
I looked further into this artist because his art style really started the gears turning in my head, I knew that I wanted to explore texture in my work and this guy was the best to learn from!
His style is very abstract and everything has a vintage look to it, there are strong digital and analogue styles throughout his portfolio and it all looks very graphic. There are also a lot of decorative motives such as stitch lines, spirals, swirls and circles which I think is pretty lush!
His work is fairly broad, he has worked as an illustrator, art director and even an animator. Most of his clients are publishing based so you could say that his work is predominantly for print based media but I think even that would be selling him ever so slightly short. Important clients to merit include; Toyota, Juxtapoz, Computer Arts, Communication Arts and IDN.
His work aims at a large audience, some cuter things would obviously suit children's publishing and the slightly more abstract images suit an older audience. I would say however that because of how graphic and surreal the artwork is it wouldn't necessarily target an older adult audience so the safe zone would be anywhere between 10 and 30 year old's.
Cerriteno has so many awesome projects that I would have loved to have been a part of but one illustration in particular always grab my attention every time I visit his site.
Cerriteno has a beautiful portfolio site and regularly shows his work off in galleries, these two methods seem to be extremely effective for him as he seems to constantly get new commissions. He likes to collaborate with other artists too which in a way is another promotional method in it's own right. That method is also useful because it not only showcases his work through other artists sites but it opens up doors for projects in the future, he is building bridges by collaborating which I believe is crucial towards getting noticed as an artist.
I was really impressed with how versatile this artist was.
He has painted some custom shoes, made awesome paper toys, designed a browser based game and even made some photo-montage illustrations as an advertising campaign for Toyota!
This kind of versatility is definitely something that I would want to channel in my future self, just thinking outside of the box on a regular basis, and having fun whilst doing it.
I couldn't find out whether Cerriteno has an agent but it might be a good guess to say that he hasn't purely based on how experienced and well known he is.
As I stated before he likes to collaborate and he has had his work in galleries but his site doesn't seem to say that he is committed to one gallery or organization per say.
Alberto has an online store where he sells art prints as well as expensive originals, a lot of his website in fact is filled with personal illustrations, arguably just as much as there is commissioned work. To me that just means that this man is really into his artwork and the workload just gradually builds up in it's own time. An excellent way to work.
Alberto seems to be a full time illustrator and with the amount of work that he produces I can see how he sustains himself.
This artist has inspired me in many ways, he makes me want to grab a paint brush and start making some marks. I can confirm that one of my projects will concentrate on the exploration of texture, I also want to focus on man made textures and natural distress through screen print. Seeing some of Cerriteno's images as three dimensional objects makes me want to try something similar.Maybe my CV could be an interactive piece, either way, feeling mega inspired.
No comments:
Post a Comment