Inspiring Illustrators

Dan McCarthy
The storybook illustrations of Dan McCarthy find power in their simplicity. Take note of the limited palette he uses and the economy of form. Sometimes less is more. See more of his work here: http://www.danmccarthy.org/

Above Image: Dan McCarthy

Above Image: Dan McCarthy

Above Image: Dan McCarthy

Chris Ware
Chris Ware's meticulous, thoughtful, beautifully designed drawings serve as insightful cultural commentary through the storyboard layout of a cartoon. Check out the Acme Novelty Warehouse and Quimby Mouse for more work by Ware.

Above Image - Chris Ware

Charles Burns
The definitive Graphic Artist. White and Black used at their best. For more of his work check out this article about his book Black Hole at Salon.com. Additionally look for his animation in Fear(s) of the Dark.

Above Image - Charles Burns

Charley Harper
A wonderful use of modernist abstraction found in the simple forms and elegant design of Charley Harper's illustrations. More on him here.

Above Image - Charley Harper

More Artists - Ideas and inspiration

Oliver Herring
I showed Oliver's work today in class as an example of how one can use ordinary materials in an extraordinary way. Using collaged photography, pink foam from home depot and the reference of a live model he is able to create sensitive, intricate, delicate and striking pieces of sculpture.

Above Image - Sculpture by Oliver Herring

Above Image - Sculpture by Oliver Herring

The following is a blurb from wikipedia:
For the Styrofoam Photo sculpture, Herring starts with a polystyrene base and pastes thousands of cut up photographs to the base. “Gloria,” one of his most famous sculptures, is of a girl leaning against a wall in a colorful flower dress holding her necklace. Herring took pictures from every angle of her and he cut and pastes them on the base to form the sculpture.


Marlene Dumas
I presented the works of Marlene Dumas in class because she creates passionate watercolors, drawings and oil paintings that typically start from photographic source material. Beyond the fact that she is incredibly prolific I like to use her as an example of how any starting point can be transcended. She is not "copying" a photo but using it as a catylist to start making her marks.

Above image - Marlene Dumas

Above image - Marlene Dumas

Ghada Amer
One final artist I showed yesterday in regards to technique was Ghada Amer. She uses loose washes of color and thread to create sensual and layered large format paintings. From a distance you see only tangles of color and line but as you walk closer and inspect the piece you realize it is composed of hundreds of overlapping sewn drawings and dangling threads. A technique one might use to achieve a similar result could be working out a drawing in Illustrator using live trace and printing out the result as a template to sew from. The printout and a section of fabric could be placed one on top of the other and the needle could weave it's way through the drawing and fabric until the desired image is traced with thread upon the surface of the fabric.

Above Image - Ghada Amer

Artists Update

Charlie White
above: From the series, Everything is American

From Wikipedia:
Using a combination of fiction, artifice, and make-believe to represent the human condition, many of White's photographs explore America’s social fictions and the tensions in identity and perception they generate. White shares a relationship with the directorial forms of photography practised by such artists as Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall. Applying cinematic techniques, his set-up photographs are directed and staged narrative stills. This narrative focus can be perceived in his previous photographic series like In a Matter of Days (1999) or Understanding Joshua (2001) which employ a pictorial play between reality and fiction, occasionally taken to grotesque extremes. Understanding Joshua is a series of photos of a puppet meant to represent "complete fragility manifest in a body,"^[1] placed in various situations related to human relationships.

above: From the series, Understanding Joshua

Robin Rhode

From wikipedia:
Robin Rhode is a South African artist, born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa, now based in Berlin, Germany. In 1998, he obtained a diploma in Fine Art from Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by a postgraduate program at theSouth African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Art in Johannesburg.

Working predominantly with everyday material like charcoal, chalk and paint, Rhode started out creating performances that are based on his own drawings of objects that he interacts with. He expanded and refined this practice into creating photography sequences and digital animations. These works are characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that brings aspects of performance, happening, drawing, film and photography together. Rhode often returns to his native South Africa, creating work in the streets of Johannesburg and continuously registering the traces of poverty and social inequality. An outstanding characteristic of his works is his addressing of social concerns in a playful and productive manner, incorporating these issues into his practice without simplifying or judging them.

Spencer Tunick

From Wikipedia:

Spencer Tunick (born January 1, 1967) is an American artist. He is best known for his installations that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations. His installations are often situated in urban locations throughout the world. He also has done some "Beyond The City" woodland and beach installations and still does individuals and small groups occasionally.

In 1992, Tunick started out documenting live nudes in public locations in New York through video and photographs. His early works from this period focus more on a single nude individual to small groups of nudes. These works are much more intimate images than the massive installations for which he's now known. By 1994 Tunick had organized and photographed over 65 temporary site related installations in the United States and abroad. Since then, he has taken his celebration of the nude form international, and has taken photos in cities that include Cork, Dublin, Bruges, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Rome, San Sebastián, São Paulo, Caracas, Newcastle/Gateshead, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Santiago, Mexico City and Amsterdam. In August of 1997, Tunick photographed a large group of nudes at The Great Went, a festival hosted by Phish in Limestone, Maine.