Illustration Lecture

Today we had a lecture on the chronologies of Illustration with Matt Hudson. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Matt spoke with the passion the subject deserved. Loving to draw from a young age one of the reasons I'm studying the creative arts, I can imagine it's similar for a lot of people in this field. One thing that I picked up most of all was a point that Matt stressed heavily, and that is that Illustration isn't simply drawing. It needs 3 very important things before it gets that status:

Context: It needs a purpose, something to give it reason for existence whether that be a client or an audience etc.

Image: It has to have a form, whatever that may be, it's visual & aesthetic production is very important.

Concept: There must be idea and meaning behind the work, if not it just gets classified as a random drawing.

Another good point Matt made was that a well rounded adaptable Illustrator should be able to reflect the works tone of voice in the media being used either by aiding it, or by contrasting it to strike a juxtaposition within the piece. A good example that was shown that demonstrates this principle is this piece by Jillian Tamaki. It is clear that the illustration connotes emotions of sympathy and sorrow, it suggests this through the use of black watercolour.

I do follow certain design blogs where Illustration work is regularly posted, so I'm aware of some famous Illustrators, I particularly like Shepard Faireys work, I like the way he utilises colour schemes within his vector artwork to transcend the meanings he wants to get across. I also like that he uses the Typeface 'Gotham' by Tobias Frere-Jones which is one of my favourites. This lecture brought to my attention countless other Illustrators who's work I'm sure I'll enjoy, examples include:

Adrian Tomine - He does the front covers for The New Yorker magazine, I really love the way he makes you understand the subtleties within a piece, his work really makes you think. These below are some of my favourites:

I also found a homage piece that's been done, perhaps to mock one of Tomine's more famous pieces of work, I'm not really sure what it's about but I enjoyed it all the same:

I've also found the artist Malika Favre, who's vector artwork is absolutely gorgeous. Sleek, stylish & sexy.

It reminds me a bit of Jasper Goodall's Illustration work which I also really like: