Illostribute - Norman Saunders

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 master illustrator that was selected for this months submissions was the amazing pulp cover artist Norman Saunders. His work is fun, dangerous, and a bit racy, and you can read more about him HERE. My thought process behind the piece I did, was first and foremost to try and capture the spirit of what Mr. Saunders did so well in his work, showcasing an intriguing preview of the novel as cover art. I wanted to layer my piece with compelling story elements including danger, lust, conflict, romance, murder, espionage, ect. Pretty much everything that you could find in Mr. Saunders work, I wanted to try and include in mine.

As far as style went, I wanted to keep my piece strong and bold. I chose a very limited color pallet and simple graphic style. I didn't want to get bogged down with multiple color choices for clothing, hair, and background elements, I wanted it to be simple. Lady in white (hero) man in black (villain) and a messy textured red background to help showcase the feeling of the blood and danger encompassing this illustration. This piece was painted with a combination of acrylic paint and paper collage. The piece shown above includes typography and printing effects created in photoshop. The piece below is what the actual original illustration looks like. This original painting is available for purchase in the store HERE. .



Original Painting



Human Sheild
8" x 10"
Acrylic / Paper Collage
2010

Below is a collection of some of Mr. Saunders work, which I referenced for my painting inspired by his work.

Illostribute - John Held Jr

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.

J.C. Leyendecker

I was recently asked to participate in the new blog Illostribute.com . Illostribute is a new collaborative illustration blog, conceived and edited by illustrator & artist Toby Thane Neighbors . The idea is to honor master illustrators (and occasionally fine artists) by seriously investigating their work, through interpretation.

The first master artist that was selected for this project was the amazing J.C. Leyendecker. His work is beautiful and elegant, 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.


As for my piece inspired by Leyendecker's work, what I focused on was his bold graphic concept of letting everything in black fall away, only relying on lighter objects in the piece to tell the story in the painting. I love how limited yet very descriptive this technique is that he occasionally used and so I thought I'd explore that concept in my piece inspired by his work.

Drinks With Leyendecker
Acrylic & Paper Collage
8" x 10"
2010