Reuben Rude

Reuben rude is one of my favourite artists at the moment, not for any conceptual reasons, just simply because of how he puts lines down on a given surface. His eye for it seems quite similar to mine, only difference being, this guy is absolutely shit hot at it. He works the same way in painting as I try to work digitally. The way he makes a character look using thick lines that run off into a sharp point is really effective, and then he further enhances this using alot of colours for fills or an overprint feel. In time, if I ever get the time to do a painting, I would love to explore the technique thats done here. I mean, it can be done in other ways, Morning breath are almost a digital equivalent only with more typographic insight.

Caspar Williamson, submission for Nobrow.

This was Caspars submission to Nobrow magazine. This is two colours not including stock and is made up of quite thick textural line work to make tones and shades on top. In print, it almost looks like a hand coloured photocopy because of the level of detail in it. What I like most about this image is the actual form he has chosen to give the jellyfish, with long tapering tentacles (Or cilia, as I have found out throughout gathering the copy for my book.)

Caspar Williamson / Glow pigment overprint.

Caspar Williamson is an illustrator/designer/printer. The work above is actually by Franz Vesolt, but as far as I can tell was printed by Caspar Williamson. Its a great idea, simply dat and night. in daytime you see the first image, and at night you see the glow in the dark overprint. Im really glad I found this because it shows how good getting some glow in the dark ink could be. Ive sent the check off for the stuff today, so I should have it half way through next week.

The line work here also works really well with the glow overprint, its simple and suits being illuminated because of its content. This is something I am hoping pulls off well with my use for the glow in the dark. The idea is that I'm going to print my squid icon I developed at the start of the project over the front cover.

Jens Harder

Jens Harder is an illustrator and a comic book artist From germany. I found her in NoBrow magazine issue 1. Jens doesnt just draw sea life, but here are two particulary good examples of how Jens uses line and how it translates across to sea life imagery. Jens uses lines to create tone, and in the image above Jens has also used one colour to help build up a tonal quality to the squids bodies.

In most of the imagery I have seen of Jens she uses 3 colours including her outline colour, which is something I have been doing for my sea life illustrations, I think something I can take away from looking at Jens work is that the more detail you put into the line work, the richer the image you are working on will become, making it much more appealing to only add  a few simple colours the emphasise the immidiacy of the image.

I find the way Jens produces line work really appealing and it has the qualities of a really well done pencil drawing, so as is stands I'm pretty unsure how she does these illustrations, I mean they could be digitally done but they have an organic look to them too so she could be really good at pencil drawing and inking, which is probably closer to the truth as she is also a comic book artist.

After my tutorial with Mr Bingo.

Mr. Bingo is a cool guy, and hes really got his head screwed on. I really appreciated talking to him about the way he goes about working as an illustrator and I feel more confident about submitting work and getting my work out there now. Initially I had a few questions for him:

How did you get recognition when you were starting out?
He said that having a website is really useful nowadays and that I am doing the right thing to submit illustrations to submission based Zines because potentially if somebody who was involved in editorial saw my work, they would probably hire me for a job - which really suprised me! But I apreciated the comment because it has made me feel more confident hearing that form someone who isnt a best mate.

Did you initially struggle with finding a context to fit your work within?
He said that basically, everything he does is for money so there is normally a context already there. I think tht personal work which dosnt have a context is fine, but a context will make an illustrator basically look more employable. Bingo also said that Humour as the primary focus of his work and always has been.

We also talked a bit about some work I was doing and over all it was a really constructive and positive feedback process which I was really happy about. For my book, Bingo said I could consider:

Stock colour & cover to make the initial visual contact with the book more striking and immidiate to someone who might buy it. The cover at the moment is a bit of a let down in regards to the rest of the book, which i totally agree with and I think I should change it before I print it next week.

Overall a really good day, and a really good visiting professional!

Visiting professional : Mr. Bingo

"Some say he's the 'Master of pens'.
Some call him the 'Shoreditch Beat Busketeer'.
Some say he fucks about for a living."

Mr Bingo has come in today, who is an illustrator, Who does alot of work for editorial.

The image above is something ive seen a few times in books and on the internet. But I think his visual style has alot of appeal and I also think in some ways its quite similar to the way I draw so the tutorial I'm having with him later on in the say should be really helpful and interesting to see how he deals with illustration issues.

As far as I can tell what Bingo does is vector artworks, but I spose I'll find out later today when I talk to him anyway. I'll put more stuff up about him after I have had my tutorial with him.

Census of marine life website

Just been on the Census of marine lifes website, its interesting to see how they are dealing with images and type to give readers entry level information about deep sea life.

Ill upload the images tomorow, the server is rejecting them