Rob Hodgson attacks his characters with playful strikes of colour, splatters of paint, and smears of crayon to maximum effect. His process embraces the natural movement and energy in the roughs and the offcuts.
The use of very free, sketchy marks in his work gives the illusion of spontaneity and effortlessness. However, the carefully arranged compositions and ever so perfectly wonky edges give away the thought-out, considered element to his work that is also there.
As well ask doing his own thing, Rob also works at Urban Graphic, the wonderful stationary designers and publishers based in Bristol. He goes on to tell us more, as well as how he works up his many great textures.
My name is Rob Hodgson— I am an illustrator living in Bristol, UK. I work in-house as a designer at Urban Graphic, a contemporary publishing company where I work on illustration projects, licensing and design. Outside of this I work on my own pictures/prints/sculpture/anim
I work a lot with hand print processes like block printing and paper stencils. I use a lot of different mark making techniques and have little pencils all the way up to massive crayons I’ve made myself.
Usually, I piece this stuff on the computer for ease of editing, but I also work by hand with wood and ceramics. I’m trying to cast resin sculpture at the moment, so we’ll see where that leads!
© Rob Hodgson, 2014
