Tobias Tak

 

Le Gun No. 5 (2011)

The absurdity of these characters captures your attention straight away with the almost psychedelic angle they are drawn at and the fantasy-like faces giving each character an individual yet messed up personality.

The style the characters have been drawn in I don’t particularly like, it comes across as a rushed cross hatch, and the artist has most likely done this effect on purpose however where you can see the joined of the hatching, it looks just like a bad overlapping paint line would look and just doesn’t come across as effective.

The whole piece along with the buildings at the top which look like high-school craze graffiti lettering, just comes across as a piece of GCSE style work that is attempting to interpret a fantasy land and yet doesn’t do it effectively, especially with what looks like a range of different softness graphite pencils that have only made the cross-hatching look less effective.

Robert Grossman

 

‘Illustration Now 3’

I chose this artist for the way he has portrayed the donkey as a human along with what looks to be it’s parter which has been portrayed as an elephant and yet the artist has still added more human attributes to the characters by adding angry and upset facial expressions which I found entertaining especially in the fact they are animals portraying humans.

The drawing style used in both pieces peaked my interest as the definition lines he has added to show perhaps a slight shadow or wrinkling in the skin without putting in too much detail, really adds that bit more to the character. Doing this on top of the colour, or it could even work if not better on greyscale work, works really well, especially in the top piece with the facial expressions, it helps add emphasis.

The pieces look digitally created or at least manipulated which isn’t something I have particularly tried before, however with the slight old fashioned comic style used by this artist, it makes me intrigued to have a go.

Elwood H. Smith

 

‘Illustration Now 3’

This is an unrealistic simple yet effective style of drawing, which yet again I feel is very effective, especially in these images that the artist is portraying as they would appeal highly to a younger audience. Imagery and styles like this look as if they would illustrate a children’s book or a child friendly comic book, as the characters look quiet helpless and dopey in the circumstances which would appeal as cute or intriguing to younger people.

Going by the text in the top image, the artist is attempting to create not a series of images but simply humorous single imagery that could appeal to the younger audience which I feel could be developed into characters for a book or animated work.

The simple line drawn technique easily defines the characters as what they are, even if the anatomy isn’t realistic, it sometimes can be more effective to create a fantasy like comic character like this that can be related to as imaginary than something too believable, shown by most of todays most famous children’s cartoons.

Steve Brodner

 

‘An Illustrated Life’

The almost caricature style the artist has tried to adopt in this piece works quiet well as singular head images, however I would have liked to have seen more development towards full bodies for the first image as the second works so well as an unrealistic whole body character. The unrealistic anatomy would be something quite hard to capture with the detailed and mis-shapen heads, however I feel the oversized head on the out of scale body does have quit a humorous factor to it that when drawn in experimental stances like the second image, can look very effective.

The images looks as if they have been done in pencil and ink and then gone over with a wash of colour which works well, especially on the second image as a more modern take on what could be an interesting for of graphic novel.

Seamus Heffernan

 

‘An Illustrated Life’

The use of what looks like watercolour paint and ink/fine liner looks to have worked well, especially against the pale skin coloured material it is drawn upon. Using a pale skin coloured background colour allowed the artist to illustrate the characters in a slightly off colour skin tone which aded a cartoon like effect that worked quite well.

As colour in work doesnt particularly interest me, the simple line technique used to drawn the characters is very effective, as it isn’t Tom Gauld simple where the character is clearly fictional and made more up of shapes that lookking realistic, however Heffernan has drawn these characters as if he has observed real people then simply drawn the most simple aspects of the person that are identifiable and then added a wash of colour over in sections to add tone and shadowing that has itself increased the look of a person. than the line drawing alone would have.

Matt Chamberlain

Matt Chamberlain is a Huddersfield University Illustration student who is massively inspired by Dan Mumford (Bottom Image) who is an artist who does a lot of work for post-hardcore bands. The style matt tries to capture is a detailed deep black illustration that is worked on digitally in areas for the crisp detail he captures. Everyday images, mainly focusing recently on areas where he grew up, he gives a sin city/noir style that is highly appealing to the eye and could illustrate effectively a psychedelic or nightmarish world.

The style he draws in shows deeper dark sections that immediately catch your attention and then your eye is drawn to the less significant parts of the image and you notice all the detail in the image. It works well for illustrating nightmare-like or psychedelic images as well as making everyday locations look dreary and horror related when they could in actual fact bare no resemblance.

The style is perfect for modern day graphic novel style illustrations as it has a violent, suspense effect that is used in many of todays concept art for comics and graphic novels as well as films and promotional images, such as Dan Mumford’s CD illustrations, as it slowly is becoming a very popular type style of drawing.

Bill Bragg

Le Gun No. 5 (2011)

The silhouette style drawing is the first thing that captures my attention and how the artist has drawn the images with a direction of light creating blacked out, silhouetted sections of the character along with shadows that clearly define where the light is directing from.

The characters seem to be dressed in stereotypical prison uniforms and this to me looks as if he has tried to glamourise this characters by adding colour and a strange shaped head to both hide the identity of the character whilst also making a character that could be approachable by a younger audience that may find the character amusing.

The fact the characters are both very simple and just sitting on a chair could add to my previous thought about glamourising the character who looks as if they are talking to a psychologist or under some sort of interrogation/quiz.

The materials the artist has used resembles ink and acrylic that have created the bold blacks and colour portrayed and were definitely the most effective choice.

Neal Fox

Le Gun No. 5 (2011)

These controversial pieces immediately communicate a message to the viewer, a message that can be interpreted differently by different people. The combination of the line drawn images and block coloured black and white sections compare quite well together as they both stand out against each other whilst complimenting one another.

The character style itself i’m not particularly a fan of as they are all drawn in a similar way where the head is a lot more detailed than the body and therefore stands out, now this may be the style the artist was going for however I don’t think it does the character any favours as it doesn’t look right. However if this is the style the artist was going for, the characters do look reasonably creepy drawn in this style and so he could have been trying to entice an audience with freaky looking people?

His target audience obviously isn’t a young age and this is portrayed through the fact he is controversially involving a famous children’s character in a way that he wouldn’t normally be portrayed. The fact the floor on the top image looks to be either flooded of just turned into a psychedelic effect, the artist obviously wants to play with the viewers mind and not just have a piece you can understand straight away, makes you think.

 

Paul Cusack

‘An Illustrated Life’ Cusack’s word bears a resemblance to observational life drawings, and at a first glance I can imagine it almost looks as if the artist draws people in public as they walk past and then he continues to draw different people as one image so it all combines together to create an overall image that looks very appealing.

The style it reminds me of with the sketchy pencil drawn images is concept art for films or animations, like a rough sketch up before the final idea. However I feel sometimes that the sketchy, messy initial drawings are just as good if not better than the finished pieces as it shows peoples imagination which I think is was Cusack is trying to capture in his work and appeal to people that feel the same way about this style of drawing.

Saul Steinberg

 

Saul Steinburg’s work is vacant and without meaning most of the time, he creates illustrations for the sake of entertainment and not for meaning. His work is simple line drawn images that illustrate for example something like a common everyday notion but with a comic twist.

His work doesn’t have meaning and doesn’t particularly have an age range target audience, Steinburg doesn’t create a portfolio or work but instead just creates pieces of work that can simply make a person smile or a cheap laugh.

He keeps his work as simple as possible, not using colour or a range of materials just line drawn black ink images, that sometimes are the most effective.