Illustration Changes alot, What is Trending Now?

March 28, 2020March 29, 2020 | Rolo

Flat colour, clean vectors and a limited colour palette have been dominating the illustration scene throughout the 2010s, largely because of the rise in digital painting programs such as Photoshop. These designs take a ‘less is more’ approach that can add an air of sophistication to an illustration. A reduced colour palette also makes the illustrator think about the colours they are using.

A counter trend to the simplistic and colourful flat vector art is the resurgence of printmaking and traditional looking illustrations that has been occurring lately, much to my joy. Traditional looking illustrations add a uniqueness that seems to be missing from the flat, simplistic digital illustrations that dominated in the 2010s, many companies are turning to a more traditional looking approach that adds a certain warmth to the illustration and helps them to stand out from the crowd.

Another thing that has seen a rise in popularity recently is pieces that blur the lines between illustration and animation. As our attention spans get shorter and shorter, illustrators are having to find new ways to keep audiences engaged with their work. Things such as gifs, images that move are making the lines between animation and illustration even greyer.

Illustrated letters and typography are a trend that has been around for a while and is here to stay. While typefaces still have their uses, they just can’t blend an illustrative style into an image the same way that typography can. Illustrated letters make a blog of text stand out and add character to a page, illuminating the worlds that follow them.

While political statements might not be a trend for everyone, they still do play a huge part in illustration today. With all of the crazy things going on in the world right now, from Brexit to the re-elections in the US and everything else, many people are turning to illustration to express their views and deal with the current world crisis in their own way, be it through satirical art or otherwise, I expect that this trend is just going to grow even more throughout the course of 2020.

In the 2010s we finally started moving away from deplorable ‘body shaming’ and instead headed towards celebrating our personal and physical appearance. Many illustrators have been captured all of the different ways our bodies are perceived in imperfect and wacky ways. They have done this through wobbly lines, uneven brush strokes and odd proportions. An add on to this is the surge in inclusive art that has been becoming more prominent in the past year, people from all ages, backgrounds and lifestyles are coming forward in a multitude of visual styles. Illustration itself is becoming as in demand, if not more as photography within editorial illustration, so the demand for inclusive illustration is just going to get larger and hopefully it will be a trend that is here to stay.

With the rise of figures such as Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough who are fighting for our planet and making it mainstream, and also the increasing availability of eco-friendly products and meat alternatives, sustainable living is itself becoming a huge trend. This is translating into the illustration world too; more and more illustrators are tackling issues such as climate change and over consumption and urging us to live a more sustainable life and to do our part to save our home and the animals that live on it. This is a trend that I hope never goes away, and one that I too am a part of.

Maywst, R., 2016. Illustrative Lettering Process — Ray Mawst Lettering & Design. [online] Ray Mawst Lettering & Design. Available at: <http://www.raymawst.com/blog/2016/3/11/fosz1e117f33nrg3fvuqldwzzk1jmt> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Barker, G., n.d. Trump Cartoon Boris. [online] UK Political Cartoonist Cartoons. Available at: <https://www.garybarker.co.uk/donald-trump-boris-cartoon.html> [Accessed 27 March 2020].

Byrd, T., 2019. Illustrating A More Inclusive Brand. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/facebook-design-business-tools/illustrating-a-more-inclusive-brand-bbb4fa6c4bb3> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Moran, L., 2019. Huffpost Is Now A Part Of Verizon Media. [online] Huffingtonpost.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/greta-thunberg-street-art-jody-thomas-bristol-upfest_n_5cdeb690e4b00735a915598e?ri18n=true> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

May, T., 2019. 10 Top Illustration Trends For 2020. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: <https://www.creativebloq.com/features/illustration-trends-2020> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Lee, E., 2018. Trends From The London Illustration Fair 2019 | Printed.Com Blog. [online] Printed.com Blog. Available at: <https://www.printed.com/blog/trends-london-illustration-fair-2019/> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

Digital Arts. 2020. 2020’S Best Up-And-Coming Illustrators. [online] Available at: <https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/illustrators-wholl-kick-off-2020s-in-style/> [Accessed 28 March 2020].

I Am Not Organised, When Will I Learn? Also An Autobiography

February 28, 2020March 15, 2020 | Rolo

This has been an exceptionally busy week so far. I have primarily been focusing on designing and creating layouts for the double paged spread since I am so worried about how little time I have spent doing it so far Time is running out on this project and I need to manage my time better if I have any hope of completing everything on time.

I have refined my spot illustrations a but by separating the colour layer from the linework layer. I did this by drawing out the shape of the body parts on a piece of layout payer using brush pen and colouring them in with soft pastels on a piece of cartridge paper with a light pad. This will allow me to stitch the linework and colour together in Photoshop and will make the linework and the whole spot illustrations bolder overall as the pastel won’t blur the lines. I have been struggling quite a bit with how much the pastels smudge, they are a relatively new material for me to use and doing the linework and colour separately seems to be the only way I can combat the problem.

As far as the layout goes, I have decided that I want to have a full-page illustration on one page, with the text, headings, subheadings on the other page, with some other spot illustrations floating around the text. This is a similar layout to one used by Little White Lies in their Hidden Lives magazine issue and it inspired me quite a lot. For the full-page illustration, I was inspired by a particularly psychedelic scene in House where Kung-Fu is sucked through a lampshade and transported to some sort of weird, colourful dimension made up of colourful concentric circles. I decided to recreate this scene in my own way, having body parts swirling around in the vortex, rather than Kung-Fu because I feel as if using an entire person for a spot illustration would really blur the lines of what a spot illustration is supposed to be and wouldn’t really fit with how Little White Lies lays out their magazines.

Screenshot of Little White Lies draft layout

I have tried to be consistent with the materials I use for my spot illustrations, having used pastels for the colourful concentric circles design, the body parts and also the flowers because pastels seem to fit the messiness of House more than other materials and I want the texture of the spot illustrations to be the same since I am creating the design on the basis that it’s for a professional publication and it needs to be consistent for that. For the text page I used the eyedropper tool to sample colours from the full-page illustration and tried filling the text page with them to keep the colours consistent too. I settled on using the green colour as the background because it is lurid and creepy, while still looking nice and colourful which really fits with the overall tone of House. I used the actual text used on the House movie poster as placement text for the heading and filled it white because it seems to work best with the green and makes it look weirdly innocent, plus, Blanche the cat is white so it’s a nice nod to her. This isn’t going to be my final layout, but it does give me a good idea of what it is going to look like once I am done. I removed the outline on the flowers to contrast the boldness of the body parts illustrations on the previous page. I am quite happy with how much work I have done this week but there is still a long way to go. I need to refine my layout design and also do the same with the front cover. I am going to try separating the Blanche brush pen design from the trippy pastel background, similar to what I have done for these spot illustrations because I really want Blanche to stand out the most on the front over. I have quite a bit to do next week but I’m getting there. One day I will be good at managing my time instead of rushing around so much towards the end

LWL dev

February 21, 2020June 8, 2020 | Rolo

I’d like to start this post by saying that I am so happy I have chosen House as the film I’m creating art for, and that we’re exploring editorial illustration. It is giving me the opportunity to explore materials and art styles that I have never done before, or even though I would ever do. The fact the visuals are so naïve and childlike has led me down the road of trying childlike materials such as crayons, and their adult cousin, soft pastels, which I’ve surprisingly really enjoyed doing. I feel as if this project is making me grow so much as an illustrator, more than the previous ones because I am so far out of my comfort zone, and thoroughly enjoying being so, that I’m considering keeping these materials in my illustrative arsenal and looking more into Editorial illustration as a potential path for me to go down, whether it’s side projects to add to my income or as a full time career. I need to research the field a lot more before I make any sort of concrete decision but I didn’t really think about it before this project and I feel as if my eyes have been opened up to the world of editorial illustration and it’s definitely got my interest.

Flowers painted by me using Photoshop, too clean and perfect for House.
Flowers drawing with crayon by me, I like them but they just aren’t bold enough for House.

Over the weekend I started what I hope are my final spot illustrations, having chosen soft pastels as the material I am going to use for them because of their boldness, messiness and ability to create interesting textures that I simply could not achieve with watercolour paint or digital painting. I also used a Japanese brush pen to draw linework around them to make them stand out more, I feel as if this is the best way for me to create them because I have used pens in my art pretty much consistently throughout my life and they also help me to contain the soft pastels a little bit and make the designs even bolder in the process. I still have a long way to go with using soft pastels, I need a lot more practice with them before the illustrations can be considered ready to be presented on my final design because I don’t have much experience with them prior to this week and they are difficult for me to get used to.

As well as creating some spot illustrations at the start of the week, I have taken a bit of a U-turn as far as my front cover design for the LWL project goes, I was initially heading down the path of developing my cracked mirror design, and even went as far as creating a few media tests with decollage while I tried to figure out how to achieve the effect I wanted, but it just wasn’t working out. I realised that design was something I would feel comfortable doing and not necessarily something that would fit with the overall tone of House. Instead, I have chosen to develop my design that focuses on Blanche as the main character because I feel that she is the most recognisable film and focusing on only one character for the film fits with the layout that LWL magazines use on their front covers. I am worried that changing my mind about the front cover this late in the project could jeopardise the rest of my work because I am going to have to change the aesthetic a bit from what I was originally going for. I am hoping that this isn’t going to be much of a problem because my development piece has been done in soft pastel and brush pen, alike the spot illustrations I over the last weekend so at least there is some consistency with them. I haven’t really thought about how my spot illustrations are going to be presented on the page at this point, I’ve been focusing a lot on creating the art, rather than the layout which I realise isn’t a good thing because the layout of a magazine is just as important as the art inside it. Next week I really need to spend a lot of time creating potential layout sheets and thinking about where things should be placed on the page.

Front Cover Development- Soft Pastel and Brush Pen

Lot’s To Do, No Time To Do It- An Autobiography

February 15, 2020March 24, 2020 | Rolo

As promised, I’m going to use this post to talk about the fact I’m co-illustrating a book with my girlfriend which is getting published on October 31^st, this is like a dream come true! Since the last post, I have managed to complete the 2^nd illustration which depicts a Black Shuck, which is a ghostly black hell hound from East Anglian folklore that is said to roam the coastal town of Norfolk, causing havoc and death wherever it roams. The book is going to be comprised of a few of Lenora and Miss Jessel’s favourite posts from their blog ‘The Haunted Palace’ which has been exploring the darker side of folklore, history and the supernatural since 2013; it is an interesting read and really fits with the kind of things I am into. The illustrations are primarily going to be dark and eerie, and of the gothic sensibility, a style I have loved doing since I was a small child so I am unbelievably happy to be taking on this commission, alongside some of my favourite people.

The illustrations I have done so far have started with a pencil sketch that I showed to my aunt to make sure she was happy with the composition of the piece and so she can offer any suggestions or ask for any changes, once she is happy, I scan the sketch onto my computer and do the final linework and colour in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet and brush tools. This is a different process to how I used to work digitally, previously I would do all of the linework in Illustrator before moving into Photoshop for to colour, but I have since realised that Photoshop is a more than capable program for painting the entire piece, and it is the industry standard for digital illustrators. I am doing my best to draw them in a consistent style, which is going to be vital as they are going to be published in a book and not only that, but I’m doing it for someone I care about, my aunt and I really don’t want to let her down because I know how much this means to her. It is my first time being published, I’ve never took on a project this big before and I am a bit worried, there is a lot of pressure, especially since I have college work to do alongside it, I have given myself a lot to do and there isn’t a lot of time to do it. I seriously need to work on my time management and planning, it’s something I always seem to struggle with, despite the fact seem to end up doing more work than people on my course. Part of me thinks that I work well with the stress, that I need it to work, and maybe that’s true, but it isn’t easy on me, it messes with my head sometimes and I find it hard to enjoy myself even when I’m not working, because even when I’m not physically moving, I’m thinking about the work. I think I could make my life a lot easier if I created some sort of timetable or planner, set myself time to work on each project and allow myself to chill when I’m not.

Haunted Palace Blog Logo- Digital painting

The stress is only one part of this commission though, yes I am finding it difficult to balance the book illustrations with college work, but I’m still doing it, and in a way it’s going to provide me with valuable experience that a lot of people my age don’t get. I’m learning to communicate with a client, compromise with them and give them what they want without jeopardising my own wellbeing. Plus, all of the illustrations I do for the book will make amazing additions to my professional portfolio, which could help me to get more work in the future. Not only that, but I’m getting published at 22, I’m doing something that will make people I care about happy and I get to do it with my girlfriend, literally the only thing that is making it difficult for me is the fact that I also have project work to do alongside it. I guess this will be a good growing opportunity for me, it’ll force me to work to a schedule, juggle projects and better manage my time, which is going to be important after my course if I have any hope of being a full-time illustrator. I am hoping that I’m able to incorporate the book work with my college work at some point though it would make my life that little bit easier as I wouldn’t have to worry that I’m not putting enough work into one of the projects because I’m struggling to juggle two different things at once right now.

Warning- Cute Dog Painting Inside

November 14, 2019December 3, 2019 | Rolo

Rainey-Smith, L. (2019). *Gallery | The Art of Liv Rainey-Smith*. [online] Xylographilia.com. Available at: https://xylographilia.com/gallery/#jp-carousel-3538 [Accessed 14 Nov. 2019].

Well, this has a been a pretty productive week so far, I’ve done over half of the research and figured out which of my own artists I am going to choose to research once I’ve finished the ones set by my tutors. I found a really cool woodcut printmaker called Liv Rainey-Smith who does some seriously gothic, Lovecraftian designs; her work is right up my alley and is definitely going to tie into my more macabre theme that I plan on running with this project, with H.P. Lovecraft being one of the godfathers of horror, he even has a branch of horror named after him! The level of detail Rainey-Smith achieves with woodcut is mind-blowing too, it’s almost hard to believe that she’s using woodcut to create her designs. I’m getting so excited about this project now; I think I’m going to hone the spirit of Lovecraft with my designs this time too. The only thing I’m worried about is whether or not I am going to have time to finish the research because my girlfriend is working on a large mural commission that is going up in Wallsend and it’s looking like she is going to need help finishing it before the deadline on Saturday. I may have to put my research project on hold for a couple of days to make sure that the mural gets finished on time and do my best to catch up on the research afterwards. I just can’t let her struggle like this, we’ve collaborated on murals before, we painted a caravan together and work well together so I’m confident that if I help her then it’ll get done on time and then I can wholly focus on the research afterwards, even if it means staying up most of the night on Sunday, it’s not like I have a project hand in on Monday, her deadline is more important right now.

Photos from the caravan me and @babajagaart panted a while back.

All of this said, I am still going to do bits of research in between painting the mural, like when the paint is drying etc, so hopefully I won’t have a horrific amount to do on Sunday. As well as Liv Rainey-Smith, I plan on researching the legendary Hokusai, I mean how could I not research him for the purpose of a print project, he literally revolutionised relief printing and took it into a whole other realm. I’m not usually that interested in the historical artists, which I know is bad because we wouldn’t be where we are with art without them, however, there are a few historical artists that I’m really interested in and Hokusai is one of them. I don’t really know a lot about him as a person or artist, only what I’ve seen of his work like the great wave so it will be interesting to research him properly and find out how he achieved so much in his life, maybe I could learn something that I could apply to my own artistic practice.

The third and final artist that I’m going to research isn’t even a print maker at all, which I’m hoping won’t be a problem, I’m not sure if we’re only supposed to research artists that make prints. Anyway, I’m going to research Jack Davis, best known for his work on the Creepshow comics, I’ve chosen him as more of a style reference than anything else, he used to create highly bizarre and macabre characters that I think could inspire my own horror focused style during the print project. I’m really hoping that we get to create enough prints to take home and not just prints for the course during the project because I wouldn’t mind selling some on etsy or something, it’s not exactly making comics but I have thought about selling art prints and getting myself out there for a while, I’ve just never had the resources to do so and I’m hoping exploring all of the print facilities I’ll have access to on the upcoming project will change that. I’m happy that we are going to be doing different types of printing because I’ll be able to figure out which one works out best for me, who knows, it could even be the start of a print business venture for me.

Don’t Panic, It’s Only Hand-In Day

November 7, 2019March 24, 2020 | Rolo

Well… Today was a bit of a mess, the good news is that I finally handed in the Character Design project, the bad news is it took me the entire day to get there. Today was an anxiety day and a bad one at that, I ran out of anxiety meds and barely slept last night trying to make sure everything was perfect and ready to hand in, which in hindsight wasn’t the best idea; no pills and no sleep makes me a stressed boy. All throughout the day I watched as people rushed to finish their project, spend a few minutes handing it in digitally and go home, whereas despite having my project done before going to uni, I was still the last person to go home because I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to format my artwork correctly to send off to the submissions dropbox, nor could I figure out how to print out my character boards and final illustration, despite having done this many times before. My brain just was clearly on vacation today. I guess it is over now and I can rest easy knowing that I have handed in the best I could do at the time. In the future, I am so going to have to manage my time more effectively and prepare for the fact that things are most likely going to go wrong on hand in day. I need to have everything sorted and ready to hand in a whole 24 hours before hand in day so that I don’t end up having to stay up until a ridiculous hour before going to uni. Hopefully this way I can be properly rested and in a better mental state to deal with anything that goes wrong on hand in day, because to be perfectly honest, the more things went wrong, the worse my mental state got, and I basically had a complete breakdown which could have been avoided.

As I expected, we’re off next week and have been given a research task for the upcoming project to be handed in by Monday. There are a lot of artists and companies to research on the list, more than we have been given before, which I’m pretty sure is due to the fact that not everyone on the course necessarily does a lot of research, something that has been mentioned in class previously. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to me because I spent a lot of time doing my research for the Skaadi project, nevertheless I will do my best to complete the whopping 11 people/companies to research that the tutors have given us plus another 3 of our choice in just over a week, it’s a good thing I enjoy writing!! The upcoming project looks like one I will really enjoy though, it seems to be a print based project and we’ll be doing risograph printing (something I’ve seen done but haven’t tried before) relief printing (I’ve done lino cut before with varying results) and screen printing which is the one I am looking forward to the most because during the final project on my level 3 course I did screen printing for the first time in my life and managed to get my first distinction ever, so I’ve got high hopes for it this time.

I’m going to spend the next week delving into the world of printing and research artists that I feel could influence my style this project, I’m thinking about going down a more macabre route this time, while still linking it to current world events. I enjoy making sci-fi/fantasy and horror tropes and gothic comment on the modern world. Besides, my main interests generally fall between sci-fi/ fantasy and horror, I did fantasy last time with Skaadi the demon elf, so now it’s time for something a bit on the dark side. I haven’t been doing a lot of my own art lately and I don’t think I’m going to have much time to in the foreseeable future with uni, so I guess I’m going to have my make my own artwork my university work.

Skaadi Returns!

October 4, 2019December 2, 2019 | Rolo

After a week of absolute manic panic, I handed in the Fat Lass Preserves Project, which, to me went really well and I am happy enough with the final outcome. I have finally gotten back to doing the project I really enjoy doing, the Skaadi Project. Unsurprisingly, my fat lass design didn’t get picked by the company owner, which to be quite honest, doesn’t bother me because it was the first time I have ever attempted to draw and finish a larger person, so it was always going to be a learning curve, yet I am definitely feeling more confident about drawing larger characters again in the future and also in my ability to create plus size characters of my own.

Initial plus-size superhero sketch.
Developed version of my plus-size superhero sketch.
Final version of the Fat Lass superhero

This week I have focused on digitising one of my dynamic Skaadi sketches to put on to an A2 development board that we have been asked to create as part of our final outcomes. I sketched out a variety of character poses last week during the fat lass project; they were really rough and sketchy and didn’t really look like Skaadi at all. To rectify this, I scanned the sketches on to a computer and opened them in Adobe Illustrator, I then used the pen and pencil tools to trace over the line work, while slightly changing the proportions of the Skaadi sketches to fit how I see Skaadi in my minds-eye. Once I had the line work I proceeded to colour Skaadi in Illustrator using the paintbrush tool, I decided to focus on colouring the dynamic pose because I am really happy with the proportions and I am considering using the dynamic pose on my final comic panel. I took photos of my girlfriend to use as reference for each of thew poses because I am still getting used to drawing humanoid characters and having first hand reference really helps me figure out the proportions of my characters.

I found colouring Skaadi with the paintbrush tool very awkward and fiddly, it was extremely time consuming to just create a basic fill layer, whereas I know that in photoshop, it is possible to fill entire areas with simply one click. It wasn’t until today (Thursday) that I found out from my tutor that there is a much easier way to fill colour in illustrator and also that we don’t actually have to complete the whole design in Illustrator, I was under the impression that it was an Illustrator project based on the content of the computer sessions so far. I guess I could have found out differently earlier if I had found the confidence to outwardly ask for help. Nevertheless, I will be using Photoshop to colour my designs in the future from now on and I will keep to Illustrator for the linework. I’ll probably take the dynamic Skaadi pose over to Photoshop as well because, while I am happy with the pose, proportions and the colour choices I have made, I am just not satisfied with her face and she looks rather flat, I feel as if it will be a lot easier to add highlights and shadows in Photoshop.

Overall, I am rather happy with my progress on the project so far, as well as how I have chosen to manage my time, especially without the support of my tutors, having been on a reading week. I definitely need to work on my confidence and anxiety, I should ask for help and information when I need it instead of just struggling unnecessarily for ages. I am so pleased to be working on the Skaadi project now and my character is finally starting to come take some sort of shape, I’m aware that time is running out to do this project but now that I know we can use Photoshop as well as Illustrator, I am fairly confident that things are only going to get better from here.

Castle Chickenstein

Life, The Universe and Art Things

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