Vibrant and Plain Wacky Illustrations of Alexander Blue

I’ve been meaning to include the bold and whimsical style of Nate Williams also known as Alexander Blue, for a while now, and here it is.

Nate’s work is striking in its strong use of colour, quirky character style and humour. Nate also works under his own name in a slightly different style, which can be found here.

Nate grew up exploring San Francisco’s diverse streets on his skateboard where he acquired an appreciation for imagery through skateboarding culture at a young age. ‘I also had a learning disability that made reading difficult so I gravitated towards imagery because it made more sense to me.

Imagery transcended language barriers so I thought of it as a language everyone spoke. I initially touched on professional illustration in college when I traded illustrations with a snowboard company for snowboards, clothes and snowboarding passes. I didn’t think of it as a viable career path until years later’.

‘I create my work in a variety of ways. Sometimes I paint with acrylics, draw with Sharpie markers, ball point pens, a Wacom tablet, paint with India ink, create textures with water color or photocopy machines, etc.. but basically what I am trying to do is create a library of modular pieces I can later put into the computer and rearrange the size, composition, color and so on. I really like organic textures and loose, free flowing lines but as an illustrator with quick turn around times I need to be able to make quick changes and easily incorporate client feedback, so I mix all these really organic elements in a way that is easy to modify on the computer’

Nate has given us some insight into the process he goes through when carrying out his freelance illustration work:

• Phone/email client for specifics and creative direction
• Brainstorm on a park bench or a coffee shop and create pencil roughs
• Show client the roughs via a web page
• Client gives feedback
• Incorporate the feedback into the final illustration
• Deliver via flipdrive.com

© Nate Williams, 2009

Nate plans to get into more surface pattern design as well as licensing in the future: ‘I am just learning about this part of the industry’.

See more of his work and updates on Flickr.

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