Doodles

I've had a bit of free time over the past couple of days, so I've done a few drawings of people, trying to get a vintage-maybe 50's style to them. Anyway, see what you think:

Elena Odrizola

Since completing my 'Owl and the Pussycat' images, I've been thinking more and more about children's illustration. Or to put it more precisely- good children's illustration. Good children's illustration should spark the child's imagination, it should be the kind that sticks in the mind of the child long after the book is finished, the kind that you remember into adult years. A good children's book will mean something different to each child, it should be intriguing enough to get their imagination going- but simple enough that they can fill in the blanks for themselves.

Elena Odrizola's illustrations for the book 'The Opposite' do just that. They have a spark, a whimsy and an innocence to them that is perfect for children. The drawings are beautiful, delicate and fragile. They help to create a weird and wonderful world where anything can happen. It's the kind of book I wish I'd been given as a child.

Blexbolex

I've been a big fan of Blexbolex for a while now; what first attracted me to his work was the way that he manages to communicate complicated ideas through a simple yet sophisticated use of colour and shape - a good example of how less is more. The books that he has had published through 'Nobrow' are also fantastic!

Paul Blow

I recently came across the fantastic work of Paul Blow. For me his work encapsulates the very best of what contemporary editorial illustration can achieve. Through his bold choice of colour, original style and intelligent ideas he creates sophisticated work that has a real impact. I think it is really encouraging to see that illustration with 'bite' can be commercially viable.

Cross Pathway Project

For the past few weeks I've been working with a group other students on a 'cross-pathway project'. I should say that I really enjoyed this project and loved being part of a team, I think that the final outcome that we came up with is something that none of us would have thought of or would have been capable of were we working individually.
We were given the word 'kinetic' and asked to think up something around that. We decided to reinvent an old Victorian toy based on the notion of movement and the persistence of vision called a 'thaumatrope'. We then decided that we would need a mechanism in order to display them and so came up with a box with a motor that would spin the image for the viewer; we were trying to create something that wouldn't look out of place at a Victorian carnival.
We created the designs of the thaumatropes with a 'trick or treat' theme; the idea being that once you choose a thaumatrope you can not tell if your image is a trick or a treat until you 'take it for a spin' in the machine. My designs were all 'tricks' based around the idea of 'subverting innocence'.By that I mean that on one side of the design I would put an illustration that depicts something innocent and slightly twee in a style that wouldn't look out of place on the cover of an Edith Blyton novel and then on the other side I would put a detail that when placed on the initial images takes away the innocence or 'subverts' it.