I’ve been focusing lately incorporating more digital collage elements into my work, which helps me to communicate difficult concepts in a much more effective way while developing a style and approach that is more unique to my true creative vision.

© Thomas James 2012

“I take a pretty light-hearted approach to making illustrations. I am not a very serious person— I think it’s important to have fun with whatever I’m working on. I love using colour, texture, and patterns to make pictures that appeal to the eyes. I work almost exclusively with traditional media, usually some combination of gouache, acrylic, inks, and collaged tissue paper.”

“Today I am inspired by funny animals, kids’ game shows, and the relationship between the bizarre/fantastical and everyday life.”

© Kaley McKean, 2011

“I have recently become enamored with the work of Caspar David Friedrich. I am particularly fascinated by his propensity for symmetry, and his capacity to turn vastness into singularity. Friedrich urged his pupils and contemporaries alike to make pictures that exhibited seelenvoll: literally “full of soul”. I have attempted to follow, however crudely, this somewhat brazen request.”  

“Traditionally, I’m an oil painter. Since moving to Lima, Peru, however, where my ‘studio’ doubles as studio apartment, I’ve had to trade in my toxic oils for water soluble gouache. This transition has had a profound effect on my work as I have had to approach each painting with more diligence and precision.

Gone are the days of preemptively throwing down whatever ground, or whatever tone. With gouache, one cannot layer (very well) so each stroke has to be accurate and considered.” 

“I find that my task as a painter is to recover the presence of a place; in a sense, to give it back its name.

To engage this sort of role, to personify the inorganic, is to enter into the subterranean world of objects and their occult presence within the natural world. My work investigates the American landscape as a zone of contrariety: the militarized testing ground versus the site of the sublime spiritual encounter; the American West as real estate commodity versus mystical and metaphysical space. I attempt to exhibit in my work a sense of expansive space.” 

“Concurrently, my work exemplifies the tradition of the American landscape with a sense of anxiety; the presence of familiar commercial advertisements beaconing over the ambiguous and harsh terrain that expand beyond them. I attempt to imbue the landscape with a sense of terror, a palpable tension, an allusion to a violent past and an unexpected future. These two opposing forces work as one or as a duet, perhaps a calamity of the serene and the sublime.” 

© Paul Anthony Rouphail, 2011.

The categories on her site alone, which include ‘light boxes’, ‘body paint’, ‘xxx’ and ‘kamasutra’, illustrate versatility and willingness to try new things. Check out her trippy video, ‘Cream Guru’.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

“I work with a variety of materials depending on the project. For my pieces on paper or wood I use gouache, pencil, and ink. Sometimes acrylic. I’ve been making sculptures out of expanding foam recently and am releasing a video later this week that uses digitally shot live-action stop motion that I animated over frame by frame using Photoshop and AfterEffects. After finishing the digital version of the video I recorded and added text with VHS. I’ll be posting both versions on my website.”

“For Cream Guru I animated my drawings and paintings then mixed them in with live video and stop motion. I got the idea from reading ‘The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep’ by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. There are 12 spiritual practices the Tibetan Buddhists use when lucid dreaming and I included some of their techniques into the content of my video.”  

© Celeste Byers, 2011.

One of Ryan’s favourite places is revealed at the end of the post.

My work revolves around drawing. Good painting is good drawing, and different materials just extend my hand in different ways. I like the versatility that crayons and gouache give.

When I draw, I employ the ‘signature line’ method. The theory being that you do not hesitate when you sign your name, you just do it—  it’s automatic. Working like this makes your drawings highly identifiable (see Joe Ciardello, Lynn Pauley, Robert Weaver). I try to make as many mistakes, and have as many accidents during this process as possible. 

© Ryan Haywood, 2011. 

I love Bryce Wymer‘s sketchbooks for their mixture of free, exploratory pages, and the more complete drawings, which sometimes find their way into completed pieces of work. Have a look at his website, where you can see how some these drawings have been used.

© Bryce Wymer, 2011

Each artist has put their own twist on the Absolut canvas they were given, resulting in a collection of unique and interesting designs. Here are a few examples and a little information from the Absolute Blank press release.

© Mario Wagner, 2011.

ABSOLUT has always challenged conventions through creative collaborations with artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, and more recently Ellen von Unwerth and Spike Jonze. ABSOLUT BLANK is a daring new chapter for ABSOLUT.

“In ABSOLUT BLANK, ABSOLUT has boldly made its iconic bottle into a blank canvas to inspire artists throughout the world to collaborate and fill it with creativity. We brought together creative collaborators from a variety of disciplines and watched the journey from pure white canvas to exceptional pieces of art. The result depicts how artists and creativity are inspired through ABSOLUT,” says Mark Hamilton, Global Marketing Director at The Absolut Company.

© Kinsey, 2011.

© Morning Breath, 2011.

© Eduardo Recife, 2011.

© Good Wives and Warriors, 2011.

© Fernando Chamarelli, 2011.

© Ludovica Gioscia, 2011. 

I have quite a freeform approach to drawing as I rarely have an idea of what a drawing will look like before it’s finished. I enjoy the idea of people noticing something new about a drawing every time they look at it, so I include lots of detail and a wide range of colours and tones. When it comes to materials and mark making, I’m pretty open-minded. I like using graphite and running-out felt-tip pens to make textures of gloom and decay, but I wouldn’t say my work is dark at all.  

I’m a lifelong resident of Hackney, East London. The area holds a lot of personal relevance, which has motivated my current East London Drawings project. The drawings also mark a very pivotal stage for Hackney, documenting the urban developments in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games, an event that will have a profound effect on the social and physical fabric of London’s East End in years to come. 

© Sam Ashton, 2011.

Can you tell us a little about what you do?

What I do— I try and split my work equally in the fields of fine art and illustration. All my art starts off traditionally, usually with a graphite drawing (I don’t like to paint) and then I either layer acrylic washes over-top or I scan it straight into Photoshop and work off of it from there. Always, though, I try and keep my art looking ambiguous in how it was created, so it doesn’t detract from the piece.

Can you tell us a little more about the specific materials you use?

I usually start off with a pretty detailed graphite drawing on BFK Rives toned paper and overlay that with washes of acrylic. Once I get a general palette established, I go in with colored pencils to push and pull the darker and lighter hues to get subtle values. I alternate with acrylics and colored pencils until I get something close to what I had originally pictured.

You mentioned using Photoshop. What functions do you find most useful for the kind of work you do?

I like photoshop for its forgiveness when it comes to cleaning up mistakes, but at the same time, I feel like it eliminates too many restrictions that one might have when traditionally drawing, which can be really overwhelming. Usually, I just like to usephotoshop to subtly alter the color in my drawings with gradient overlays and digital glazes, but sometimes I feel comfortable enough to paint 80% of a piece on my tablet. I guess it really just depends on the job at hand.

Has using the computer had a large influence on the direction your style has taken?

I’d say using the digital medium in my work has definitely let me do things I normally wouldn’t be able to do traditionally, though I always try and stay as far as possible from having that ‘digitally generated’ look. I feel like a good digital illustration shouldn’t look like it was made on a computer.

What inspires you to work apart from art?

I’d say the constant need to just put my feelings down onto paper. I feel like no matter how frustrated I can get sometimes with my art, I’m always itching to come back to it because I feel like I’ll burst if I dont get my hands on a pencil.

What would be your dream project?

Illustrating a Pokemon card.

© Sam Wolfe Connelly, 2011.

It is worth sitting down and giving this film attention from start to finish and see the story unfold.

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