Her detailed and controlled work exhibits a very finely tuned drawing skill with a strong natural element to them.

Johanna has answered a few questions about her style and process for us.

How did you first get into illustrating in the style that you are now known for?

I began working with intricate, hand drawn pen images at art school in my final year. I was studying textiles and whilst everyone else seemed to be creating digitally manipulated images, or bold graphical silhouettes with lots of flat colour.

I decided I wanted to do something different. My style of work was born out of an attempt to make my work different to my contemporaries at the time.

How do you go about planning and developing your typical inked piece?

Every piece is different, but if I know the outline shape of the design, circle, heart, square etc, I draw that out first. I then start filling in the shape, working in pencil first before going over the lines with fine liner pen.

I sometimes draught out where large elements are going to to be placed such as birds or big blossoms, but generally its a fairly organic creative process and I just start from a point and the design grows to fit the shape.

I work with layout paper, pencils and a lot of fineliner pens. After I’ve created the pen and ink drawing, I scan it into Photoshop and do any tweaking / sharpening / flipping I need to do before finishing the piece.

ⓒ Johanna Basford, 2009

What are you working on at the moment?

A Christmas Card design for a large high street store, illustrations and brand identity for a new luxury spa opening in London and 3 large hand painted canvases for a cocktail bar.

That sounds excellent Johanna, thank you.

MoonApe is on Twitter.

He gets it just right when it comes to minimal colour choice and the gradients created through texture.

ⓒ Grant Coghill, 2009

MoonApe

I’ve given him a quick interview on his background, tools and techniques and gained valuable information on his tendencies for drawing on bathroom surfaces.

How did you end up in illustration?

I was dropped accidentally from an airship on it’s way to the land of proper jobs.

To be honest I’ve always been interested in illustration and drawing since I can remember, and I spent many years working in animation commercially and independently.

It kind of evolved from that. I decided a couple of years ago that it was about time I got stuck in. So I did an MA in Children’s book illustration at Cambridge School of Art, got signed up with Macmillan Children’s books, and my first book will be published next year. I absolutely love what I do.

What are the tools and materials you use?

Simple tools really, black markers of various weights, inks, coloured paper, a print room, lightbox, sketchbooks (very important), lots of bulldog clips to hang work in progress in the studio, and the usual geeky desktop gadgets.

How would you go about putting one of these illustrations together?

Being a prolific doodler sort of takes care of 50% of the work, so I mostly develop ideas from my sketchbook.

I make a flat drawing first with pen and sometimes inks, then I break the drawing up into layers and scan all the bits, layering them over each other and colouring them with palettes I use regularly.

Recently though collage has been creeping into my work, so I have been experimenting with how to connect that with drawing.

What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever illustrated?

I drew faces all over the bath once with waterproof crayons, oh and a dog on a log, with a frog in the fog.

ⓒ Simon Wild, 2009

What’s in the pipeline?

I am a member of the collective Boys Who Draw and we have some very exciting plans for 2010 including a new online presence, and some shows in the works. I am re-designing my own site also and hope to have that finished before Christmas.

I am currently working on a set of posters that you colour in yourself. I am also working on some ‘moving illustration’ to be featured in ‘Quiet Voices’, a Late at the Tate evening in January at Tate Britain.

In the future I would like to collaborate more with like minded illustrators/ designers on interesting projects/exhibitions/publications.

Thanks Simon! All the best.

MoonApe on Twitter

I especially like his consistent choice of soft colours and shapes that reappear throughout his work. I’ve asked him a few questions to find out more about his background, tools and promotion tips.

How did you get into the illustration work you do?

I would say I’m still finding my style. I think there will always be common ideas and themes in my work but I’d like to think it will continue to evolve.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Recently I’ve found my work becoming more and more simple and I’m happy with direction it seems to be heading, but we’ll see what happens…

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

What are your key illustration tools?

My MacBook and 2 Pilot pens that I got in Japan nearly 3 years ago and they still haven’t run out. They must be magical.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Do you have a favourite self promotion tip?

It’s important to maintain a presence online so I would recommend getting involved with anything and everything so that people don’t forget about your work.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Also, although there are a lot of places now to display your artwork online, I think having a proper portfolio site that displays your work effectively is still really important.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

ⓒ Andrew Groves, 2009

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just finished off a couple of editorial pieces for Orange and Snowboarder Magazine, next I’m working on some T-shirt designs and forcing myself to paint more.

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

Sounds exciting, Andrew, thank you!

ANY_CHARACTER_HERE

MoonApe is on Twitter!

Matt’s choice of colour, use of texture and shape is aesthetically spot on. I particularly like his recent set of pattern pieces, which seem to consist of every colour under the sun, despite all working together very well.

Matt was good enough to speak extensively to Ape on the Moon readers about his work.

What got you into illustration?

Now that’s a long story, so please bear with me…

I studied Fine Art in London for four years doing anything and everything that wasn’t painting, printmaking or sculpture, and after graduating ended up working in education teaching photography and graphic arts. It was around this time that I started learning Photoshop, in turn discovering a whole new world of possibilities for image-making.

While teaching graphic arts, I become more and more excited by contemporary illustration and how artists were returning to traditional directions of promotion and development – having exhibitions, developing personal styles of work, experimenting with media etc. I’ve always been an obsessive doodler, and with the inspiration of illustrators and artists’ work I’ve always admired, I soon started creating more and more work.

This was great while I was teaching because I could pass on my discoveries to my students, but soon found that I didn’t have enough time to devote to my art. So just over a year ago I made the scary decision to quit my job, move to London and make art all the time. Since then, all’s been good and I’m doing exactly what I want. Fun times!

Increasingly, at the moment at least, my work has become more abstract in its focus of experimenting with visual elements. There are overtones of inspiration from folk art patterns / colours, impossible perspectives of optical illusions, geometry and more.

This work is also inspired a lot by music. I mostly listen to electronic artists that really experiment with patterns and sequencing, and I’m sure that this feeds into the visuals too. It reminds of synesthetic exercises that I used to teach, listening to music and creating visual responses in terms of shape, scale, placement and colour.

All of my work starts as a drawing, taking a line for a walk and seeing what happens. I never sketch things out but just draw with a fineliner or brush pen, careful to accommodate my mistakes as I go. Once done, I scan the drawing in and then hand-trace it in Illustrator. I find this part of the process quite therapeutic in a Zen kinda-way. It can take a few hours, but I prefer it to Live Trace for the sake of creating a manageable quality of line. After the tracing’s complete, I’ll use Live Paint to colour in the design.

I’m really pedantic about colour in terms of composition and combinations because I love experimenting with different palettes. I often have reference images open, usually paintings, as inspiration for possible colour choices. With the colour in place, I’ll often play with a few masks to add variety to the colour range and sometimes replace flat colour fills with gradients.

With the vector work complete, I then work on the design in Photoshop and have fun adding handmade textures, adjustment masks, etc, to add a certain surface tangibility and variation to it. Again, this can take a while because there are so many immediate possibilities and directions to build upon. I often find myself getting carried away with things at this final stage, so usually have to remove things to bring the focus back towards the subtleties of essential elements.

ⓒ C86, 2009

What is in the pipeline?

Work, work and more work! For starters, I’ll be appearing in upcoming issues of IdN and Digital Arts magazines.

Next week, I’ll be relaunching my website after a much-needed revamp. At the end of this month I’ll be exhibiting in the group show “Nothing Like Something Happens Anywhere” in Gothenberg, Sweden, as well as another show in South Africa near the end of the year. And on top of that, there’s gonna be some new tees to buy, new stuff for You Work For Them, a secret project with friends in the Black Rock Collective, collabs, doodles, and more!

That all sounds excellent and exciting, Matt – looking forward to seeing more!

–

Announcement:

I’ve just launched a new site that is all about online promotion methods for creative freelancers and independent workers. It is Red Lemon Club.

With what comes with undoubtedly great amounts of practice, time and skill are illustrations that stand out for their ability to create seemingly touchable textures, shapes and light effects.

From Rochester in New York, Andy has had work associated with Wallpaper Magazine, Wired UK and Warp Records. I’ve asked him a few questions about his background and process.

What kind of training or background have you had in your art?

Andy is keeping pretty quiet about what he’s working on at the moment, but you can keep track of what work he’s completed month by month at his blog.

ⓒ Andy Gilmore, 2009

Thanks, and best of luck for the future Andy!

Moonape: Follow Me on Twitter

Mike is known not only for his trademark style that is busy, organic and vivacious, but also his work in other areas, including authoring several books on hand-drawn illustration topics that include hand-drawn typography in: ‘Hand Job’, and hand-drawn patterns in: ‘Over and Over’. He started a magazine called ‘Untitled’ in 2007, which covers his own various interests. I talked to him about his work and what he’s working on at the moment.

Mike has always been drawing, but after studying painting at college, decided to focus more closely on design and illustration. As is evident in the work he does, Mike is keen to avoid the use of the computer, believing that with hand-drawn work, the character and true style of the illustrator is more clearly revealed than through digital means. His most treasured tool is understandably his pencil.

Mike’s work process for his recent pattern work involve ‘sitting down and going for it, then hope it works out.’ This advice is important for all illustrators out there, who might struggle to get work started, or even finished. It just takes an initial effort to get started, even if the outcome is not yet realised, and push it until the work is complete.

At the moment Mike is working on ‘a good pile of things. Some stuff for the x-games, some packaging for Brooklyn-based chocolatiers the ‘Mast Brothers’, an art show at Giant Robot SF, second issue of my magazine, and yes a new book…’

ⓒ Mike Perry, 2009

There is no doubt that Mike’s style and the styles he has inspired make a refreshing change from much of the purely digitally produced work we are seeing in this age. His continuing success demonstrates the popularity and requirement of hand-drawn styles that we are seeing more and more of today.

Good luck with everything, Mike!

Moonape: Follow me on Twitter for updates

He has dropped his pencils, paper and Wacom pen to talk to us, with his wife Fi, about his new luscious ‘patternscapes’ in some detail.

What made you decide to get into this pattern series?

It was a funny bit of progression while creating a few different illustrations.  I’d been playing with a few different ways of putting together a landscape, by making everything into graphic shapes and taking it a little further than normal, that ended up being a piece of artwork we released last year as an art print called ‘Asleep On A Sunbeam’.  And then I was thinking about how I could lose the horizon, and just take that part of land, and pretty much repeat it to fill a page.  Since there wasn’t really any perspective on the landscape, things didn’t get smaller in the distance so I thought the landscape could go on forever. So I took that idea and painstakingly drew out a landscape, with no perspective, that could go on forever.  That drawing was full of mountains and went on to be ‘Feelgood By Numbers’ another art print from last year.

Not long after we released that print Fi, my wife and partner in all things creative and business, started conceptualising fabrics and other homewares products using ‘Feelgood’ as the starting point.  So then it all rolled on, I developed ‘Feelgood’ into a pattern tile that could repeat forever, to be fabric printed and the rest has rolled on from there!  We’re calling them ‘Patternscapes’.

What is your work process for the patterns and what tools etc do you use?

I always start on paper, just drawing everything in full, exactly as I visualise it, but just pencil and paper, no colour:

Then I scan my drawing and take it into Adobe Illustrator, and using my Wacom tablet, my weapon of choice, I trace the illustration and do all the colours. If I’m making it into a perfect repeatable pattern tile, then I have to do a lot of measuring on-screen and ‘trial and error’ work until it works:

I’m sure there’s an easy formula for making perfect repeating patterns easily, something that textile designers swear by, but as yet I don’t know it!  I’m still learning about producing patterns, and also the textile processes, I’ll let you know when I work it all out!

MoonApe: I have a link to a useful seamless pattern tutorial courtesy of iStockPhoto designer YBMEdia.

What materials are the patterns going on (and in future)?

I might hand over to Fi for this one… “When I start to think of how far we can take the patternscapes I hyperventilate with excitement of the possiblities! Obviously fabric is a perfect match for the Patternscape illustrations as the colours and shapes add a beautiful visual texture to the fabric making it perfect for cushions, bed linen, bags etc… Other areas we would like to explore are other homeware products such as lampshades, melamine wares, tiles, wallpaper and ceramics, but further afield I think there is a real scope to take the patternscapes into fashion with pieces such as contrasting, vibrant lining on coats and jackets through to accessories like scarves, caps and gloves.

We also have a real interest in extending the patternscapes into the childrens area with super cool wooden toys, wall stickers, blankets etc.  So as you can see its limitless and everyday I have a lightbulb light up above my head with new and exciting places to stamp the patternscapes on, so watch this space!”

What is in store for your work next in general?

Well, there’s quite a lot coming together at the moment.  I’ve been working on a children’s book with a writer, so I’m illustrating that at the moment but it’s still really early days and there’s a lot of work ahead but it’s a great story and we’ve got some good characters, as schedules go it wouldn’t be near publishing until next year, maybe even 2011!

ⓒ Ben O’Brien, 2009

We’re also working on an exhibition in London with some other illustrators and artists, but that’s very hush-hush for now, no details yet I’m afraid!  This year we’ll be releasing two sets of art prints, one of which will be entirely pattern-based artwork, we’re also releasing our first set of cushions and fabrics pretty soon, all using patternscapes, all very exciting!  Particular projects aside, I don’t really know what’s in store for my work, just keep on evolving, keep on developing and keep on enjoying it!

Good luck Ben and Fi!

Please Digg or Stumble this.

MoonApe.