now loading: final year project
Talented Russian illustrator Uno Moralez works in a graphic, near analog, bit-style, creating nostalgic, compelling illustrations that are both grotesque and beautiful.
from http://www.juxtapoz.com/erotica/uno-moralez-graphic-graphics
I love these images. They’re so delightfully bizarre and the 8bit style is both contemporary and nostalgic at the same time.
Takato Yamamoto’s artwork is the brilliant, heavy-lidded daughter of illustration, sex and violence. Yamamoto’s lush linework and exacting compositions depict young asian women in serene moments studded with darker narrative punchlines. Scenes of bondage and violence bleed slowly into the image as you look longer, yet Yamamoto never depicts any acts of violence–it is either impending or just completed. Yamamoto invented this style called “Heisei Estheticism,” meant for fantasy, sensual and period novels that explore similar themes of darkness, metamorphosis, love and death.
from http://www.juxtapoz.com/erotica/takato-yamamotos-heisei-estheticism
I love these illustrations. I’m planning to incorporate them into my work for my FYP because the undertones of sensuality, danger and the uncanny play with all the thematic boundaries I’m interested in.
I would also like to use the fourth image as a guide for the way I compose images (i.e. a muted pattern with a central, detailed illustration) in the book as well, so that the images don’t always have to sit in isolation.
The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a wonderful graphic novel that explores, wordlessly, the sense of displacement experienced by an immigrant who moves to a new city. He uses surreal imagery to drive home the sheer unfamiliarity of a new environment, with every panel being exquisitely crafted and beautifully composed. I can only hope to achieve something like this in my drawings – I have not yet decided whether to stick to dotwork or approach my visuals in other mediums (I also enjoy painting).
I’m referencing The Arrival because of its surreal look – it’s a good place to start if I want to do my own puzzle books.
Le Yeux du Chat by Moebius and Jodorowsky is one of my favourite short masterpieces ever. I’m sorely envious of this stellar example of wordless storytelling and I’m dying to bring my own illustrative style up to this kind of standard.
I’m thinking that storytelling will work for me. The bizarre works for me. And perhaps I could also try using monochromatic washes of colour? This is still my very early exploration so I haven’t exactly gone into specifics about what I want to do yet.
I got all the images off this original post.
I’ve been inspired by survival horror and weird anatomy lately as well as The Resurrectionist and Japanese erotica. I’ve been trying to synthesize all those influences to get into a drawing mood that can effectively carry most of my project, because honestly I just want to spend most of it drawing and creating.
I have this interest in strange deep-sea creatures (anything bizarre found in nature floats my boat) and after talking to one of my friends yesterday it helped me crystallize the kind of feeling I’m going for in my drawings, the tension between the beautiful and grotesque, as opposed to making something purely beautiful or purely grotesque. I don’t know yet about how it relates to duality or Greek mythology but somehow I believe that in these early stages I should just let myself wander a little before I buckle down and focus.
This week’s progress on coming up with illustrations for my book. Still working on more of them, will do as much as I can so I have more material to work with.
Giornale Nuovo: Gnoli’s ‘Modern Bestiary’
I love the details and surreal quality of these images. I’m using them as visual inspiration for the kind of images I want to produce with regard to my own project. I’d also like to incorporate the juxtaposition of the natural and the bizarre which is what I do already in my own personal illustration work.
