Lion Dominating a Fool

So, this is an illustration by Raymond Pettibon. I personally love Pettibon's sketchy and mostly black and white style. Some of his work is very busy and chaotic while others, like this image on the left, are relatively clean and simple. Pettibon combines illustration and typically handwritten text to form a whole image. Most of his images often feature a comedic, sometimes dark, caption either explaining the illustration or making idol or witty jokes.
I particularly enjoy this image as one of his lighter works. I enjoy how clean and neat the image is with most attention being payed to composition. I find the lack of background beyond the suggestion of a few trees to be a strong approach that enhances the illustration and causes it to come forward towards the viewer. The simple caption at the top is nicely placed and effective to the design without being distracting.

roya hamburger

above are two works of illustration by Roya Hamburger. she is a freelance illustrator based out of Amsterdam. She attended William De Kooning academy of art in 1989. and has worked for commission since 1990 to present. before coming across her work i had no previous knowledge about her work but became instantly a fan of hers after research. the most of her work is done through adobe programs photoshop, illustrator, indesign. Although she has a sound background in drawing and painting.

Roya's use of color and shape seamlessly transforms into the next. Her shape use is organic and possesses a certain hand made quality although suttle. In alot of her work i see a two pantone color scheme( on the right pink and green, on the left orange and green) excluding black and white. After reviewing her work i can see how versatile her work can be implicated into mainstream society. advertising, fashion, posters, wall paper, other household design. Below is and except from her artist statement on her website.

http://www.royahamburger.net

"When working for publishers and advertising agencies objectives always revolves around communicating a message. This is exactly where my passion and skills overlap. When it comes to commissioned work, the main point is “telling another’s story” After sixteen years being a professional in commissioned work, its time for me to tell my own story as well with chosen subjects and communicating in my own way. I have this long-time dream to create work that “broadens consciousness”, with an idealistic flavour, using graphic design, illustration and animation as vehicles." -ROYA HAMBURGER-

King Rat

So today I picked up one of my new favorite books for my illustration assignment. On the inside of the book it lists the "book design" by Victoria Kuskowski, but googling does not reveal what exactly she designed, if the cover was part of it. She might have only designed the inside pages, or designed the cover but not actually created the illustration. Searching for her name doesn't reveal anything much either, just that she designed some other books, sometimes the covers. I love this illustration because it relates well to the content of the book, which I'd argue is an important part of book cover design. I've read several books that have covers that don't have anything to do with the story itself. For example, I read a book about a man who was controlled by a dragon, set in modern Chicago, and he falls in love with the cop who's investigating the crimes the dragon made him commit. The cover has a guy in knight's armor, defending some princess, waving a sword at a fire-breathing dragon. This is not even close to what he book was about. I get that cover artists can't always read every book they design for, but when they're totally off it's a big pet peeve of mine.

This cover relates to the story by keeping it simple. Shadowy figure, rat's tail, and a city above. That's all you need to know. It has a grimy look and an orange-red color palette, gives itself a quiet mood that matches with the atmosphere of the writing. To me, it's a really great example of where the cover art and the actual story work very well together.

A Joker?! You're supposed to take those outta the deck!

Umm..dunno why the whole image didnt show up. Just a joker card from a deck of cards. Nt sure who does the intial drawing for these. Every deck has a different joker, tho this one to me was the least jokerish of the ones ive seen. theres nothing joker about him..cept maybe his clothes, but his face looks like the king of spades..nd hes riding a bike..wtf? the drawing itself is pretty cool. has good clean line work. Nt really my style but i would like to try drawings with tht kind of clean look, as my style atm is a lil more gestural. Cudnt figure out wat the 808 on the rock next to him means. Anyone hav any ideas? Dunno wat else to say bout this one. A pretty boring joker, unless the artist had a crazy story behind it. Like some king who effed up nd got kiked out nd now is at a jester status nomadically riding his bike around having lost his posessions. Havin thot about tht, i kinda like it a lil better now...or or a joker impersonating a king! yeaaa. Or it cud just be a boring ass joker...fail.

Magazine Illustrations

This page of illustrations was collected while I was reading an issue of Chicago Magazine. I never really paid attention before to the components of a magazine that may contain illustration but since it is a field of work I am interested in, I will be collecting as many as I can now!

The picture on the top left is a self-portrait done by the comic illustrator, Lille Carre. She was featured in this issue of the magazine for a comic she did about the early history of Chicago. After learning about caricatures in last week's class, I find it interesting to see how artists view themselves as cartoon characters. In this example she has drawn attention to her messy hair and other than there there aren't any defining or exaggerated features.

Next to the portrait is a picture of a faceless head of hair, indicating that this article was about hair and where to find the best places in Chicago to get a cut and color.

On the bottom left is an illustration of a astronaut girl, an ad for the Adler Planetarium. This ad come off as playful to me not only because of the rounded lines that the artist used to create the image, but because a small girl is portrayed as the main character. What I took from this ad was that the planetarium is attempting to attract children by suggesting that you could immerse your child in this realistic space odyssey.

The last image on the bottom right is another ad. This one is for a jewelry gallery shop trying to convince men that they'll be Superman if they buy their lady jewels from this store. There is just too much going on here as far as a quality advertisement because of the large amount of body copy, however, I do find it intriguing that the ad uses this typical hero comic book style in order to make their point. I'd imagine that most men would stop to look at this familiar figure and that was probably the point of the ad.

Mark Ryden

Here is an artist work that I enjoy a lot, Mark Ryden. What I love about his style is that it's very cute, but the cuteness is distorted and put in screwed up situations. I also love the way he uses oil for his paintings. The way he does his figures' eyes always leave me feeling like they are haunting me after I've looked at them. Below is some cool information about him.

Ryden's work has been featured in lowbrow art publications such as Juxtapoz and Ryden has collaborated with other lowbrow artists such as Gary Baseman and Tim Biskup, in addition to composers Stan Ridgway (Wall of Voodoo) and Pietra Wexstun. In November 2001 Ryden staged his debut New York exhibition with the Earl McGrath Gallery which then traveled on to the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA. Ryden has designed album covers for musicians including Michael Jackson, Ringo Starr, Jack Off Jill, Scarling, Screaming Trees and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and his paintings are in public and private collections. Ryden’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a recent museum retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art. Ryden is also a subject of "The Art Army" hand-made action figures by Michael Leavitt. Ryden's The Tree Show exhibit in March 2007 at the Michael Kohn gallery in Los Angeles featured oil paintings and sculptures. The largest of the paintings, "The Tree of Life," sold for $800,000 before the exhibit opened. Kirk Hammett of the heavy metal band Metallica recently commissioned Mark Ryden to paint one of his guitars. Hammett is pictured holding the guitar on the cover of "Guitar World's April 2009 issue. In February 7, 2009 Ryden's exhibition "The Snow Yak Show" was shown at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo.

For more of his work, look at his website: http://www.markryden.com/

Blur between illustration and animation

I found this the other week. Its kind of a long video but its friggin awesome. It opens up a lot of questions for me as far as legality and preparation. Is this whole production legal? Is it somehow done on the sly? Do they clean up afterwards? That would be the polite thing to do. I see a lot of what I do when I'm bored in here. When I'm making a photo-collage on photoshop I like to add abstract elements like non-discript geometric shapes and doodles on strange creatures. It adds a handmade touch to digital work.

I've seen a few other things done by this guy. Each one is about ten minutes. How do they map them out? There are so many evolving elements to this whole production that I can't fathom the process.