Jordan Carter works with a creative combination of realistic pencil drawings and bold, graphic shapes. He pairs the two together to make images that are delicate yet punchy.
It would be fair to say that most illustrators fall into either the realistic or more stylised categories. So seeing someone that works in a way that has them sitting comfortably in both is intriguing and immediately draws you in.
The contrast of the two working methods makes both elements stand out all the more and creates a unique combined look.
We were interested to hear how Jordan came up with this process of working and what happens at what stage so were glad when he talked to us about this as well as the materials he uses.
My work is a blend of hand drawn sketches juxtaposed against strong, colourful, graphic shapes to create something new and exciting.
I like to keep clear segregation between the different techniques I use so I always keep the pencil as untouched and true to the hand drawn nature of it as possible, where as for the graphic portion of a piece I like to keep things as bold, simple and strong as possible.
When working, I always start out with the most time-consuming, hand-drawn part. I don’t like to use any fancy tools when drawing, just pencils (2H - 6B) and heavy weight cartridge paper.
Then I scan and take the drawing into into Photoshop where I clean it up and begin phase 2 in Illustrator. Once the shapes and colour palette has been created, I blend the two files and the illustration is complete! I really enjoy working in two completely separate phases because it breaks up the work flow and lets me approach things from two different angles, almost like a collaboration with myself.
© Jordan Carter, 2015
