Portfolio

Artist Lecture- Katy Schneider

Katy Schneider visited a while back, and I wanted to make an entry about her lecture. She began by simply showing her work, and I wrote a few notes of what stood out to me before she began speaking. Her work in general tended to keep the texture of the paint, but it still managed to have a lot of detail. A lot of her work really captures scenes of life and the figure. Some appeared more like family photographs, with several of the figures looking straight at the viewer. There also seemed to be a large focus on children and motherhood. Her flower images also were often very centered.
When describing her work, she mentioned a few things that stood out to me. She said that her work feels more meaningful when smaller, and her goal was how to create meaning using a small space. This related to how she grew up in an apartment with a large family. She also felt she had more of a story to tell when she became a mother. She also mentioned that she preferred her work to be a focus on the everyday rather than just happy families, and she did this through various lighting techniques. Her work overall has nice contrast and color, and it was interesting how she worked with the concept of family without it becoming too cliche.

Visual Essay 1

We're working on our second visual essay, but I never posted my first:

Illustrator Research #45- Mitch Frey

Website

Mitch Frey has been illustrating professionally for 13 years. Over this time, he has branched out from woodcut to several other styles and media. Much of Mitch's most recent work is reminiscent of the WPA poster style of the 1930s-1940s. Images are rendered in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

His clients have been ebay, Hershey, Intel, Ford, Nationwide Insurance, Weyerhaeuser, NetInteraction, American Lung Association, Standard Insurance, Portland General Electric, The Pape Group, Cascade Fresh, Masters Gallery Foods, Taco Cabana, WebMD, Tillamook Cheese, Alaska Quality Seafood, MFinancial, Drypers, WeSync, Sequent, US Software, Jeld-Wen, Chuckanut, Oregon Brewery, Oregon Lottery, The Oregonian, The Oregon Garden, Portland Rose Festival Association, The Oregon Zoo, Oregon Department Of Forestry, Olson Engineering, Reed College, Linfield College, Rocky Mountain College, St. Martins College, Pacific University, Legacy Health System, Tuality Healthcare, and Brim Healthcare.

I admire the skills he has with vector art, and a lot of the colors and shading are really beautiful. A few of the pieces recreate both a sense of realism and traditional tools.

Illustrator Research #44- Koichi Fujii

Portfolio

Koichi Fujii worked as an Art Director in Tokyo for 2 decades. He is now a London based illustrator, using Illustrator and Photoshop to create his images.

Some of his clients include Kensington, Scope, Electronic House, Wellington Underwriting, Tesco, Max, North & West, Health & Fitness, Best Buy, ClearStar Financial Credit Union, and Celebrity.

I enjoy his very graphic focus of the figure as well as the color choices he makes. Most are very energetic and I also like the textures he has with the figures.

Illustrator Research #43- Jess Volinski

Website

Jess Volinski attended the School of Visual Arts where she received a BFA in Illustration with honors. Blending hand-made and digital techniques, Jess's signature style is a organic combination of flowing shapes, flowers, patterns, and figurative forms. Her media incorporates digital tools overall mixed with watercolors.

Her clients include Honolulu Magazine, Georgia-Pacific, Adobe, Time Out New York, Camden Graphics, Digital Arts Magazine, Creative Expressions, Wal-Mart, Fishs Eddy, Cherry Design Partners, Subzero Design, Momenta, Perennial Paper, StartMobile, Llewellyn Publishing, Midwives Magazine, Group Four Design, UK Greetings, Backermarks, Paperlink, WH Smith, and Hershey Food Corp.

I really like how she works with watercolor and digital media, and her lineart has a design element that mixes well with the figures.

Illustrator Research #42- Kevin Ghiglione

Website

Kevin Ghiglione has been illustrating for 20 years in Toronto, Canada. Kevin began his career studying fine art, photography and graphic design at the Alberta College of Art, later studying industrial art at The Ontario College of Art in Toronto. His illustration style often incorporates the use of photography and typography as design elements to convey a message. His work is hand generated, but composed digitally, often combining different images and textures. His work is influenced by his experience doing silkscreen printing which explains the many layers of elements and meanings that his images often contain. His work appears throughout North America in advertising campaigns, magazines and corporate communications. Kevin lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Some of his clients have been Warner Brothers, Nortel Networks, Toronto Star, Coca Cola, Rogers Cable, YMCA, Disney Films, University of Toronto, ScotiaBank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Queen's University, American Law, Canadian Space Agency, University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, Canada Life, Rutger's University, Harlequin, Canadian Business, Barron's Magazine, The Washingtonian, The Globe & Mail, PeopleSoft, Harvard Business Review, Imperial Oil, Scarborough Board of Education, Symaptico Magazine, Management Health Network, Royal Lepage, Mcgraw Hill, Scholastic, Moore Business Forms, The Body Shop, Molsons, Today's Parent, and Toronto Life.

His color schemes stand out in a lot of the pieces, and I really like the college elements that add texture.

Illustrator Research #41- Urs Knobel

Website

Urs Knobel was born in Zug, Switzerland. He graduated from the Art School of Lucerne in 1979 where he studied graphic arts. He then worked as a graphic designer at Advico and went on to become Art Director at Doyle Dane Bernbach in Zurich. Today Urs J. Knobel works as an independent illustrator and graphic designer. His illustrations have appeared in newspapers, magazines and advertising campaigns and he designed the poster for the White Turf St. Moritz racing event in 1998. His artwork has been honored by European Illustration London 1983-1984 , Graphis Press 1995 and the Society of Illustrators New York 1997 and 2007 . He is a member of the Illustrators' Partnership of America. His focused media is watercolor.

Some of his clients have been Bristol-Myers Squibb, DU, Illustrators' Partnership of America, Tages Anzeiger, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, White Turf Racing Association, Die Post, Theatergesellschaft Baar, Vabene Shoes, and Aktion Zahnfreundlich.

A lot of this art has an interesting sense of flatness, but I enjoy the caricature paintings with their large and soft strokes.

Illustrator Research #40- Kristina Swarner

Website

Kristina Swarner graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. Often described as magical and dreamlike, Kristina's work draws much of its imagery and inspiration from memories of exploring woods and gardens when she was a child. Her work has won the 2008 Sydney Taylor Book Award and the Koret International Book Award, as well as awards from Print, How, and RSVP. She lives in Chicago. Her media include pastel, watercolor, colored pencils, linoleum, among other mixed media.

Her clients have been Roaring Brook Press, National Geographic, Knopf, Utne Magazine, Marriott, Usborne Publishing, Chronicle Books, Random House, Oxford University Press, Dutton Books, Scholastic, Hay House, Graphic Artists Guild, Cricket Magazine, Heathcote Aerin's, Vineyards, Girl Scouts of America, and Imagination Stage.

I really love how whimsical this art is, and the figures are stylized in a whimsical manner themselves. The mixed media also really brightens the color choices.