AD33 - Some of my favourite illustrators started following me on Instagram!

Okay so I made a post a little while ago about celebrating my 200th follower on Instagram, well since then I have had a few other very interesting and cool things happen.
First off I was experimenting with new brushes, I drew an odd fish dinosaur character just to test the line quality. Any how It reminded me of the way that Andrew Kolb  works, he has always been a big influence to me so it wasn't a shock that I retained some of his brush tips and tricks.
After uploading the evening doodle to Instagram I thought I would tag him in it to show my followers where my influence came from.

Then this happened...

I mean WOW right? Not only did he comment but he liked the image and started following me!

That meant the world to me that he actually replied, I never thought that would have been the case. It gave me a slight boost in confidence and also after making this character I wanted to make a few more with a similar line quality.



So the next great thing that happened occurred about two days ago and I wasn't really ready for this one.
I have always been inspired by Steve Simpson and his mind boggling images, he has a really good selection of custom bar codes that he had made on his website, inspired by this I wanted to make my own for my activity book. So I gave it a go!

Through courtesy and curiosity I thought I would tag him in this post as he inspired me to do it, also I was feeling hopeful after the Kolb experience!

At this point I nearly fell from my chair as you can surely imagine...



But yeah how cool is that!
Also making bar codes is incredibly addicting and I want to make a little set of them, custom codes are definitely the future and I will be making one whenever I get the chance.

I feel that it is good news that some of my favourite professional artists like me work, gives me more reason to push forward!

I will buy these men a pint one day!

AD33 - making robot pages - The process

Now because there was a lot of drawing and designing involved for the activity book I found it fairly hard to document every step of every page. Instead I have taken some screen grabs of various images and set out the order in which they came together. It is good to see my artwork at it's various stages of completion as it allows me to reflect back on what could be changed to optimize my workload.

My sketches start out on paper, I then scan that in and use that as my rough guide. Then instead of colouring one thing at a time I set out all of the shapes and their chosen colour, this acts as my colour skeleton.

It starts to get a little confusing when they layers start building up but at this point I am just deciding which shapes go behind other shapes, building up this way allows me to see the final form without committing to final colouring.

Finally I add in small details and any hand lettering that needs to go in. These screens were taken whilst I was in-between two different images so I apologise for the sudden change in image, the method is the same either way. Once I have set everything out I'll go ahead and block in the shapes to begin the final version of the image.

Finally the text goes in and that for the most part is that image completed. I would maybe add in a drop shadow to the text just to bring it out a little.

Also I apologise for the web quality, I assure you the lines are as crisp and tidy as Salvador Dali's facial hair. (perhaps not the best analogy but I am going with it)

AD33 - This film is fantastic!

Slightly off topic yet completely relevant post, I recently watched The Book of Life and it was bloody fantastic!
My friends suggested that I watch it because the style in which the characters are made is similar to the way I make images, so I gave it a watch.

This film was visually beautiful and perfectly animated, it is not often that I am inspired by a film but it does just go to show that I should look a lot further than just other artists for inspiration. It seems that inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes.

I love how the Mexican day of the dead theme is really dominant, also every character is animated to look like a puppet which is a really cool effect.

I posted this mainly because I wanted to start being more free with my blog and instead of just posting pages and pages of research I could occasionally throw in something that I am inspired by or something awesome that I have seen and just needed to document it.

AD33 - Alberto Cerriténo - WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF THIS GUY!

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.

He illustrated this image for 'Gooo' magazine and although I don't quite know the context it seems to have a alien, futuristic theme which always goes down well in my books, looks like a nice long shape to fill up also!

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.

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!

AD33 - Lee Hodges inspired doodle and 200 followers on Instagram!

After having an awesome chat with Lee Hodges I got really inspired and wanted to try something ever so slightly different with my artwork, this time focusing more on flow and less on accuracy.

Around about the same time that this inspiration struck I also found out that I had hit 200 followers on Instagram which was exciting!

I combined the two events together and came up with this piece which I think perfectly sums up both occasions.

Very abstract but I like it, it is full of energy and the colours are so punchy!
There is a stronger consideration into texture in this piece, there isn't just one texture slapped on top of the image but instead there are multiple layers which add a lot of depth. Happy days!

Hopefully I will make more images like this in the future!