Illustrators.

Banksy.

Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist/ political activist. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling.  

I wanted to look at his work for this unit first because when I think of satire he is one of the first artists I think of. 

His work combines free style stay painting or using chalk and other drawing materials swell as stencilling. He uses this for quick application.I like his work because of his strong imagery. He is telling a story, or making a point with very little written word. 

Although he is well known for his street art he also creates other forms of art including oil paintings on canvas. One well known thing he did was buy a painting from a charity shop and then paint over the top of it before retuning it to the shop.

He also did something similar with fake £10 notes, changing the picture of the Queen’s head with Princess Diana’s head and changing the text “Bank of England” to “Banksy of England.” Someone threw a large wad of these into a crowd at Notting Hill Carnival.

I think all of these are interesting forms of art. I like the idea of painting into old paintings, its something I want to try outa swell as the stencilling. 

Quentin Blake.

Best known for illustrating the books of Roald Dahl. I wanted to take a look a his work both for the 'style' and the way he makes these illustrations. 

He sketches these out roughly in pencil then using a Lightbox he roughly traces over the top of them with a quill in ink. He will sometimes add water colour or just use black and white.

What I like, or find interesting, is how loose he is in his hand. He knows what he is doing but does not hold back when drawing. I find that very admirable as it has always been something I struggle with especially when working with portraits or the figure/ human form. 

I found these on his web sight ( https://www.quentinblake.com/about-drawing/how-i-draw ) I thought they were such a great way to show how he works. 

The reason I wanted to add his work in is it is, or at least I, associate it with a childish style. Probably because when I think of it I think of looking at them when reading the Roald Dahl books as a child. I wanted to explore I wide range of different illustration techniques. 

Joe Sacco. 

Joe Sacco is an American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, on Israeli–Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde and The Fixer on the Bosnian War.

We looked at his work a little last year and we all made a graphic novel with a chapter from the book 1984. This time I wanted to do the same but for this years the mermaid.

What we looked at last year is how to 'play a scene' in this way. i.e. from left to right as we read. Using boxed to move the eye along the story. Joe Sacco is very good at this as he uses whole scenes a lot with extra boxes and speech bubbles inside it. 

He also doesn't really use block colour in his work. He used line, dots and cross hatching to create depth. Its quite amazing really. 

I liked the idea of adding in a graphic novel element to my sketch book as I have always loved how they look and I like the process. Making a rough guide and thinking about what words will work and where they will go.

Tove Jansson. 

Tove Jansson was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She is best known for her comic the moomans as well as her illustrations for the Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien and Lewis carroll's Alice's adventures in wonderland. 

I remember her from her comic and then tv show the Moomans. I also have a small collection at home of her comics. 

What I love so much about her work is her attention to detail. She produced a lot of illustrations in both black and white (ink) and In colour ( paintings).

I wanted to look at her work for her style, I wanted to see if I could draw the real people I picked in a more cartoon like way that wasn't quite a charactature and see if I could still capture the likeness of a person. I also wanted to look at her choice of colours as she uses a lot of reds and blues. 

Geoff Grandfield.

Geoff Grandfield is an English illustrator. He has works with major newspapers and publishers. Creating illustrations in a very short space of time. He creates work that focuses around narrative and adds huge amounts of atmosphere. His work shares themes with cinematography / film noir. His work is very graphic and very colourful. 

I liked the idea of his work as I was wanting to work digitally. I love his use of colour and the graphic nature of it. 

I love the bold shapes and the instant recognition of the story.

Along with Grandfield I wanted to look at an artist called Shepard Fairey

He is an American graphic artist and social activist. Part of the Street Art movement along with other artists including Banksy. 

I liked his work because it combined all of the things I loved about the artists above. His work blurs the boundary between traditional and commercial art he uses type and images to communicate his brand of social critique.

He is very well known for his Obama 'hope' poster.

He uses a wide range of media, including painting, screen printing, digital work and stencilling. 

     

This collection of illustrators are all very different, I tried to have a look at a good wide range ( all the physical work is in my sketchbook).