If you have explored much of my blog The Cheshire Cat’s Quill, you would have noticed a fair bit to do with illustrating comics and cartoon characters. Honestly, my first creative endeavours were always as a writer or conveyed musically. Then, slowly I became akin to the visual arts. I began painting with acrylic paints after being inspired by Salvador Dali’s surrealist style. I was inspired also by Frida Kahlo, too. Then, some time ago I created a blog here called “The Observer”- a blog oozing in my own style of social satire accompanied with somewhat amusing little comic cels. Where was I heading, creatively? I don’t ever remember being particularly good with visual art growing up- why now? I haven’t even explored the field as much as my natural pencil/paint-to-paper counterparts. There was this odd guilt that sat upon my chest which said ‘who the hell do you think you are?’ All these kids who have spent years honing in on their visual art- and YOU come along, miss writer of various genre and singer/songwriter wanting to paint the town red (literally)? But, fast forward to the start of this year and it is safe to say that I have succumbed to this very strong, natural, undeniably magnetic pull towards visual art and even craft. An idea spawned off a novel I was working on back in 2009 had been given the opportunity to come to life, thanks to an assessment task for my Contemporary Media Work Practices course as part of my studies in the Master of Media programme at RMIT. The feeling has been beyond thrilling, and I have this artist’s bug where I just want to keep developing and finding out ways of making illustrating a part of my life in an ongoing fashion. It’s not to say I fancy my style, but it’s more to state that perhaps I have something- a character or two- who is marketable, and perhaps even likeable/relatable to offer. My vision here is to offer a fun, relatable, quirky tool to communicate and connect with audiences. So, upon exploring my RSS feeds, I stumbled across this cool site. It’s called Illustration Mundo, and was founded by an illustrator by the name of Nate Williams. In it, is a virtual display book of portfolios of various artists- already so very inspiring and fun to explore. My automatic reaction is to gravitate toward the kind of styles I try to capture in what I do as I relate to their aesthetics, but I’m checking out the other artists at the same time as I wonder how I would interpret their style myself if I were to give it a go in my own time. As an illustrator, I am quite new, but I do know what I want my drawings to look like, and I guess my current aesthetics are based on the styles of the old classic cartoons such as:
- Disney
- Hanna-Barbera
While I realise it will be important for me to establish my own consistent style (or styles if I so choose to work under various aliases in oppose to just the one), I feel compelled to really test out what are my strengths and weaknesses are when I draw and how I want to use those strengths to convey visual messages. Putting these thoughts aside, let’s now focus on the website I found! What a little gold nugget. Why? The site covers a wide scope of handy material and portfolios in various sections, such as:
- illustration news
- a creative forum (wow)
- blogs
- interviews
- an ‘ask a pro’ questions and answers page targeted at asking big guns in the industry various questions
- a super amazing “about” page which gives some fabulous top tips on making a feasible living off the art form
| Illustrations | Traditional | Digital |
| Ideas | Concepts | Detailed Plans |
While exploring the portfolios I took a particular fancy to illustrator Anke Weckmann. I loved her colour palette, it reminds me of something similar I had in mind for the La Femme project. Anke is from Hannover Germany and moved over to London where she studied illustration at Camberwell College of Art and Kingston University. She has since had her beautifully quirky work featured in magazines, books, greeting cards and other various products.
If you are in the same or similar shoes as myself in terms of delving into the world of illustration, make sure you click the image below for some fabulous tips!
Cheers.
The Cheshire Cat's Quill 