Here is my next submission for the collaborative illustration blog Illostribute.com . The idea is to honor master illustrators and fine artists by investigating their work, through interpretation. After researching the chosen artists work, each contributing illustrator is to respond by creating their own piece of art, inspired by the work of the referenced artist.
The second master illustrator that was selected for this project was the ever inspiring John held Jr. His work is fun and timeless, and you can read more about him HERE , and below I've posted a few of his pieces which I referenced for my inspired painting.
In referencing John Held Jr's work, I fell in love with his simple use of shape, space, character and story. I love the way he focuses on illustrating what's important to the illustration, while removing everything that is un-necessary from the concept. A perfect example is his piece with the kids playing miniature golf. Only the kids, golf clubs, and graphic sections of the putting green are illustrated, and everything else in the scene is left out. Graphically I find this to be a really bold and interesting way of depicting such a scene, and that's what I found my self inspired by.
In my piece I started with two simple rectangles, one yellow, and one brown. Adding the window, the checkered boxes, and the two red dots on the yellow rectangle on the left, helped me convert an otherwise boring yellow space into a graphic and stylized representation of a taxi cab. Adding in the characters to the piece now tells the story of a man in a taxi cab pulling up next to a lady walking down the street. Finally I played on the way the old "Life" magazines often referenced the word "Number" in their title for each issue. In the few I looked at, the titles read "Radio Number" & "Automobile Number," so to help sell the concept of my piece, I titled mine "Getting Her Number" as a reference to what the man in the taxi cab's reason was for approaching the woman on the street.
Getting Her Number
6" x 8"
Digital
2010
Piece inspired by John Held Jr.
