the new method gardener
So, it would seem I am inching ever closer to having an all out illustration style. It's been a long time coming, let me tell you, but I'm getting to a happy place.
Back in art school, our instructors were always warning us against pushing too hard to acquire that signature look. At that point, I guess they wanted us to experiment and be open, not concentrated in one specific direction. They were always cautioning against confusing a method of using materials or mere technique with that all elusive "style". Flexibility was rewarded over consistency. You have to be able to adapt to the marketplace, they constantly cautioned.
Well, that's all well and good, but the truth is to compete on an international level, you do need a style that someone can immediately identify with your work. All the greats have at least one style that is unquestionably theirs. And it would have been useful to me to know how to go about securing one that felt original and authentic!
So anyway....This is 'Ginger Sprout'. She's based on an incredibly tall and skinny girl I saw at the garden centre the other day. She started out just as a sketchbook sketch, but I liked her and decided to work it a bit further. I'll probably tinker with her a bit more (that caption on the bottom, for instance, is looking a little too tacked on, if you know what i mean, not an integral part of the whole), but weekend activities call and I'm trying to guard against my sorrowful tendency to overwork things to the point that they lose their spontaneity and edge. There's a point at which my art seems to morph from quirky riff to boringly slick over produced 80s electronica and I sometimes have a hard time recognizing just where that line is.
But all in all, I think I'm finally approaching what I can comfortably call a style. I've dubbed it "Scraps" because it is an amalgam of different textures and scraps of drawings pieced together and colored digitally, using a graphite drawing as the base. Not collage exactly as most of the bits are images I created or photographed. Still rough, but evolving. I'm (kinda sorta almost) pleased. At last. What do you think?
last | next
