AD33 artist Research - Jordan Race

I have had this illustrator in my bookmarks for a while but have only recently started to look at his work again. I have two different ways of illustrating and sometimes I cannot decide which one to use. This has resulted in a divide in my portfolio and it was worrying me a lot because I didn't know what light that would shine on me in the industry world, does it make me diverse? or does it show that I am indecisive as to where my art style is going?

My way of illustrating one image using both of my styles, an interesting idea and looks pretty good, could maybe be used as some sort of self promotion later on, maybe hand written and digital type could flow around the image and bullet point my skills.


MOVING ON!

I chose Jordan Race because he has two illustrative style and they are both frequent in his online portfolio meaning that they are both relevant, it just depends on what is needed by the client. I also chose him because Jordan is influenced by cartoons from his child hood just as I am.

There is quite a lot going on throughout his portfolio, it's colourful, dynamic and full of some great textures. His style is quite cartoon/ comic themed, there are also elements of humour throughout his images. Most of the images seem to have left a digital signature but perhaps the line work originates from a hand drawn background, I mean some are totally digital like the image in the bottom right hand corner but other pieces such as the one on the bottom left feature a lovely scratched texture.


Jordan is a children's illustrator some work is also acceptable for teens, above is a small collection of images from his site, there is a bit of surface design for skateboards in there along with some backgrounds for video games and also some pages from a children's book so it is all pretty diverse yet it still fits into the children's publishing market.

His children's book titled Bigfoot's small feet is a fairly popular book on amazon maintaining 5 stars in the reviews. From what I can see it was produced and sold by Amazon which is a brilliant client to have landed.

Jordan worked on a small brief for Deviant art which was about the true meaning of tobacco. that site in particular is not a favorite of mine but the concept is a pretty cool one that would have been fun to work on.

As far as promotion goes he doesn't actually have much of an online presence, I mean his website is fairly good but not everything has a label so I can't see the context behind the work. Also I guess his work is promoted through amazon when and if people come across his books but apart from that there is not a lot of promotion going on.


His about section on the webpage is not really that informative and I can't really find any information elsewhere so it is unknown if he is part of an agency or collective.
Jordan's web page has a mix of commissions and personal work but there is no online store where you can get any of his images. Again it is unclear if he has any other jobs that go along side his illustration career but seeing as his site seems a little out of date I would imagine that he must do something else to keep the money coming in.


This guy makes good work, however he does not really promote himself as well as he should and that is something that I should take away from this, my final major project needs to be well documented and published on my professional website for everyone to see. I should also consider sending work off to the right clients.

AD33 - Artist Research - Lee Hodges

I was shown this artist by my lecturer way back at the start of third year, his style is so inspiring and not too different from how I make my own images.

I not only chose him because of his similar style but he also has a unique way of utilizing textures in his work to make it look less digital which is something I have wanted to try out considering the new methods I am implementing in my own work. 

His style is very abstract and surreal. I am sensing a Mexican day of the dead theme coming through in his illustration style with decorative motives such as bones, stripes and flowers. It is extremely colourful and some images have elements of collage about them. A real good use of textures make it look far from digital although it is clear it originates there. 

Lee has a select portfolio consisting mostly of posters and album covers for various artists and events all over the world. The hand rendered type along with the bright a decorative images allow themselves to the advertising genre well.  He has also landed illustration jobs for Readers digest and his work fits into that context which gives him a good chance of being hired by different clients.

I'd say that his work, if toned down slightly, could reach out to a younger audience but mainly I would say that it is aimed at 18 - 25 year old's who enjoy music culture and abstract art. He DJ's at a club named Rambunctious which is a social club for the "creatively curious" so his posters also ensnare a slightly more refined art based audience. 

Most of Lee's work seems to be for local and national music events such as a Movimentos gig in London but he has also landed jobs with RHS where he illustrated a range of posters to promote children's events happening in the RHS gardens all year round. ( See top left corner for example)

Lee also had the chance to illustrate for a section in readers digest which is another commendable client.

Lee got to do another piece for Readers Digest and this time he got to complete a cover for the magazine too. The brief was based on how YouTube changed the world and it would have been a cool brief to work on as there are so many different visuals you could use to demonstrate the theme, the internet is a large place after all. 

Because Lee designs a lot of posters for clients he is getting some of the best publicity as posters get spread all over cities and are often blown up large at the actual event for all to see. He uses a few different websites to host his portfolio and he seems to have a recurring job designing posters for the Rambunctious Social Club which he also DJ's at thus giving him a bit of a social following too. 

It has already been made clear that Lee gets a lot of commissioned commercial work but I could not see if he has an agent or anything like that, nor could I see if he was a part of any kind of collective or association. To get a better answer I actually contacted him through Facebook so that I could find out how he works as an image maker. Lee is a part of the Illustration Ltd agency who are a very well established group that do a very good job of promoting and showcasing each of their clients.

Lee does not really produce anything to sell individually and seems to work purely on commissions which is a fairly hard thing to start off with with but he seems to keep himself afloat just fine.


Whilst interviewing Lee he said that " I have many arms to my work as an artist, Illustration is the main one, I also run a nightclub called the Rambunctious social club, which makes a bit of cash, I DJ make the sets, create posters etc..."
This is quite interesting as Lee is practically living the dream at this point, he is able to sustain himself doing all of the things he enjoys, each task seems to bounce off of each other and the work circulates and links each of his interests together.

If I were to take something away from this study I'd say that I want everything to link together by the end of this project, I mean I want my interests to show throughout every project even if the themes are different.

In addition to this I even got the chance to meet up with Lee as he came to our college to give an artist talk. Above are some of the many images he brought with him to show everybody. After his talk I got the chance to show him some of my own work and he seemed very excited to see what I had to offer.
We talked for a while about different textures and ways of creating images and it was all very useful to me, in fact I would say that it offered me a new perspective towards my imagery and it made me want to explore with colours and abstract concepts. More on that a little later!

AD 32 - Artist research - David DeGrand

David DeGrand may be one of my new favorite illustrators, I chose him because we have a similar way of drawing people, we both like to exaggerate features and make everything look a little disgusting. We also use similar shading techniques and our line qualities share similar traits, a perfect inspiration for me really. I also chose David because his client list is pretty marvelous to look at and it also has some clients that I would like to work for Including Nickelodeon and Walt Disney Television Animation. DeGrand has also landed clients such as MTV, Spongebob Comics and YUCK! magazine.

David's style is extremely cartoon and has an alternative feel to it, his work is a little gross and disgusting yet it is delivered in a socially acceptable way. He uses outrageous colour palates that are easy on the eyes but give the image that WOW factor to great effect. There is a lot of sketchbook work and from looking at the quality of line id say that he scans in original artwork and then colours it digitally. It's heavily based on character design but the lines and colours lend his work out to be used in comic books and cartoon ads.

David makes a lot of indie comics and higher caliper comics, there are a lot of kids books and design for cartoons in his portfolio. Id say his main audience would be aimed towards a younger generation but some of his comics fit into a slightly older catagory of maybe 18 -25 year old's.
So to sum that up he is an indie cartoonist who has a broad range of work aimed at the younger generation whilst still keeping the interest of people my age with a passion for all things gross.

David worked on a series of books called The Zombie Chasers and I would have liked to have worked on the dust jacket for one of them, it looks really busy and featured a load of characters on the cover, that would have been heaven for me to work on something like that.

I found David through a promotional website called Illustrationmundo which is a site dedicated to artists and their work, it's essentially a catalogue for illustrators and designers. The site lead me to his actual website which is really nicely set out, he also has a Facebook presence and a blog. His online space is pretty well managed and he has appeared at many art shows including Naughty Nineties, the end of an era, Cartoon Funanza and Seduction of the Idiots. Pretty much every art show he had attended was local to his home state Texas but the numbers were pretty impressive as he has appeared in around 23 local shows so far.


I couldn't really see if David works on commissions as there was no evidence on any of his sites, His main portfolio site did include a load of personal work though so id imagine if he had enough time on his hands to work on personal things he might have some room for commissions.

Speaking of personal work, David has a book of his own artwork published by Milk Shadow Books and a lot of his personal characters have been made into stickers that you can buy online.

It seems like David is busy but has enough time to work on his own things which he also makes a living from, I looked at some interviews with him and there was no indication to a regular job. David has illustrated for Spongebob comics for the past two years and is also a contributor to Heeby Jeeby Comix so it seems like he sustains himself by jumping between these two jobs and selling his personal work online.

AD 32 - artist research - Glen Mullaly

After looking through my folder of illustrators that I liked I manged to find a few that have similar styles and interests to me. Glen Mullaly was the first one that I chose, I did so because he focuses mainly on character design and the application of them. Most of his stuff is digitally rendered and includes a dominant black line which is similar to my methods as an image maker.
I would say that Glen has a style heavily influenced by retro cartoons and comics, his colour palates are gentle on the eyes yet still pack enough punch to give the characters some extra life. There is quite a lot of emphasis on the lighting on and around his characters, the light is emulated with a white mark. His heavy weight black line changes in size slightly to pick up the smaller details of his piece which fits in and pays homage to the traditional comic book/cartoon style. Most of his images are rendered digitally but there were some on his website that looked more hand made, see below for examples.

Obviously some of these images are still rendered digitally but they still have hand made features and textures about them, either that or Glen is really great at emulating hand made textures. 

Most of Glen's images target a younger audience, after looking through his client list I can confirm that to be the case as he has worked on various illustrations and comics for kids including some comics based on Star Wars Published by Dark Horse Comics. His clients also include Mcdonalds and Simon and Schuster, both of which are big names to have on an illustration CV. 

After going through Glen's blog I was able to find out some more information on the image he worked on as there was little description on his professional site. He worked on a book collection titled 'My Teacher is an Alien' which was a book I was looking into during the early stages of my dissertation, it would have been pretty awesome to work on a book with such a cool concept.

Glen has quite a large online presence including a Facebook page, Blogger, Glossom and a Thats My Folio. He also makes appearances at local art fairs such as Victoria's Ultimate Hobby and Toy Fair where he sells mini prints and autographs his work. He also has an online store and his books are also on the Amazon listings making him quite easy to come across. Finally I have found some of his books in stores such as Waterstones, this is one of the best methods of marketing he could get, to land a book in a big branch store can have great results.

I couldn't find much on Glen's agent but I found out that he works in a studio that he shares with his wife and cat, id assume the cat doesn't do much art. Glen has had work in TD Art Gallery and according to his blog post he appears at recurring events there and has done for a while. 

Reading through Glen's blog was pretty interesting as it showed me how busy he can be, one post stated that he was really busy getting work finished for a load of different clients, it seems that he doesn't have a lot of time to take on commissions, there was also nothing on his blog to support him taking any on. 

Glen makes prints and paintings to sell on his online store, he also makes appearances at comic book fairs and art shows where he sells mini prints and things. He seems to update his store quite frequently so there must be a high demand for his work. He seems to balance out doing art for fun and as a career pretty well. 

After sweeping through Glen's blog and looking at his impressive client list I couldn't find anything about him having any other commitments, he seems to be able to sustain himself using his chosen tricks of the trade. every week he seems to be working on something new, may it be character designs for an advert, new pages for a children's book or even some new paintings to go in a gallery.  

AD 32 - Artist Research - Charlie Padgett

Charlie Padgett was another artist from my illustration research folder. This one is a little different as I chose him because I feel like the characters we design share similar traits and the concept of his images largely work around a character as the centre piece. I also chose him because he uses some crazy colour palates and unique texture shading methods which aren't to different to my own. Upon first glance I'd say that his work was hand painted but after a closer inspection I believe it is rendered digitally and the textures and then emulated. I like to work in a similar way at times as I am not very strong with hand painting my images, it is something I have not really played around with, though I prefer going through the digital route as it best plays to my strengths.

A closer look at some of the images reveal my earlier suspitions, I can see custom made brushes used on the yellow image on the left as well as obvious varying speech mark opacity layers around the characters mouth. The image on the right is a little harder to tell but I still believe it's digital, nothing on his sites really explain his design process, I know from first hand experience that you can make brushed that emulate a traditional style.

Its throw back time!
Above is one of my images from second year, it was my first attempt at digital colouring without any line work. I felt like this would be a good example of emulating traditional methods, it has a acrylic like look to it when in reality it was digitally drawn using Sketchbook Pro.

Padgett works within illustration and graphic design, designing logos for campaigns and having books published for kids to name a few. He has quite a broad range of work and he stretches himself nicely across the board having designed apps, posters TV ads and even record covers. His big name clients include Happen Inc and Shake it records. Although his workload is quite broad he has quite a lot of editorial clients so i'd say that's where his work is at its comfort zone.
In addition to his wide client list I'd say his images are fun and informative and id say that they are mainly aimed at a younger audience. The naive characters and strong fiction based scenarios support my assumption in response to his target audience.

Above is an image Charlie illustrated, it was to go with an editorial concerning the 'cloak of anonymity' that becomes present online and how it brings out the worst in people. This was quite a cool concept, one that I can understand and relate to, it would have been cool to work on something like this. I like how Charlie illustrated the person as a monster, that directly engaged my interests as an image maker and I would have gone down a similar route if I got to illustrate this editorial.

This guy doesn;t really have a great online presence as he only seems to have two online portfolio sites. His work has been applied to editorials, apps and posters, all of which are naturally pushing his work out for the public to see, maybe he doesn't have many sites because he feels his work promotes him enough.

Padgett works as an art director for 3feet Factory and previously he had worked as an art director for Curiosity Advertising, Wondergroup and Barefoot advertising. Through many years of experience as an art director he would have naturally gained some strong contacts within the field, enough to give him a good amount of exposure should he need it. I couldn't find an online store for Charlie though his site mentioned that he made a series of prints, maybe that was for a client to then sell on. Most of his work seems to have came from his full time job, 3feet Factory works to develop original content, stories and images to be viewed on digital devices. A lot of images from his portfolio site seem to have come from his every day job, it's good to see the two sides of his profession come together.