In the case of Sophie Blackall, I thought she would be a great example to look at as she personally illustrates stories into wonderful pieces of artwork which are simple and easy to read. Sophie takes anonymous missed connections that are posted on Craigslist and turns them into very ethereal, warm artworks: the kind you could see in a childrens book, very simple and strange. She incorporates Chinese ink, watercolour and sometimes photoshop. Looking at how others take stories and portray them visually is helping to see the ways I could personally portray my own London story: Sophie manages to portray a story of any kind without much explanation, solely relying on the imagination of a person. I feel that's something I'd like to incorporate into my own work.
Silvia Pelissero, otherwise known as Agnes Cecile, creates monotone and heavy illustrations using enamel paint. She uses movement throughout all of her illustrations, which compliments her style of work, capturing a story and emotion within. They mainly focus on portraits, using colours that reflect these expressions: changing to bright for intimate illustrations and cold and monotone to express natural and raw.
Personally I think colour can sometimes be quite overpowering when used in bright and vibrant shades, but when looking in these images she has toned that down using white lines to out line the different paint strokes. This small, simple addition creates a dynamic that is brilliant within her images and looks extremely beautiful.
Gregory Euclide uses paper arts in his work. I know of him due to creating the album artwork for Bon Iver, but after researching more in depth I found that he was in fact a teacher, and began creating art on his whiteboard in class, as seen below. Incredibly, most of these took 25 minutes to create. He focuses on landscapes, creating realistic and detailed imagery, to very surreal and bizarre. He integrates painting and elements of nature into his work to create authenticity: looking at the more intricate details, he has often crumpled the paper to create texture and movement whilst adding structures, leaves and bark to create 3D imagery. A lot of this aspect is lost when photographed, though despite this they still look incredibly charismatic and intimate. he also uses very natural and organic colours which follows the theme of the imagery.
All three of these artists produce very different styles of work, though I feel I need to look more in depth in terms of mixed media and digital illustration. That being said, I already feel quite inspired by Sophie Blackall's style which I believe I could incorporate into my own image, possibly taking the use of pastel colours which are very soft and whimsical, and use that colour palette myself. I definitely want to look into more artists who are similar to Gregory Euclide, building up a dynamic by manipulating paper. I think this is extremely interesting, though I also need to remember that this module and brief is about developing digital skills, and can not all be hand rendered.
