Personal Inspirations - Jay Howell.

It was only very recently that I stumbled across Jay Howell's unique style of illustration and work that he produces. I first saw his work on a music video of one of my favourite artists Flume, where I felt his work was completely out of the ordinary and rather special in the illustration area, it was from here on that I decided to google and look up his work in a bit more depth.

 

I think the main reason why I like Jay's work so much is that its nothing compared to any illustrator I have seen before. Seeing as most illustrators that I like are very clean and precise with their projects, Jay is the complete opposite. In my personal opinion, I feel his work is very sketchy and quite unique in its own way. By elongating the legs of the characters that he makes, and in the video above, he literally takes your imagination to a whole next level, having illustrated characters with 3 heads, oddly shaped bodies, multiple eyes and so on. I am really fond of his work as its something, quite literally, out of the ordinary.

These are just 2 other posters, that I felt showed off Jay Howell's work best and also ones that stood out to me and appealed to me most.

Personal Inspirations - Jared Nickerson.

For a few months now I have been following Jared Nickerson's work also know as "JThreeConcepts", and I really love his style of illustration/graphical work. Much like Iain Mcarthur, his work is very surreal based but in a much different way, seeing as this is a lot more vectorised and graphical. He will literally throw anything into the mix when it comes to his projects like for example this piece above. As you can see there are, diamonds, axe's, guns, jewels, octopus tentacles?! Its all so random, yet perfectly composed and it actually works really well.

This is probably one of my favourite pieces and most iconic artworks he has produced in my opinion. The amount of variation and creativity in this is mind blowing, for a start - you don't really know where to look for a beginning point - which is something I think is great. "No beginning, middle or end". The colours all match up to the character he is trying to portrait and they all link in well; even if he has used every colour in the wheel but still its a great little project with some very nifty and iconic designs in.

He has work with some big name companies in his time producing work for their advertisements and new products, this is just a short list of his 'Main' clients JThree has worked for;

• Nike
• Adidas
• Facebook
• Coca-Cola
• V-Festival
• Virgin
• Microsoft
• Neff
• Smart Car
• Ubisoft
• Activision
• Nintendo

Personal Inspirations - Timothy J Reynolds.

One of my favourite 3D artists and huge inspiration has to be 'Timothy J Reynolds'. It was after seeing his work which inspired me and drove me to try and start doing low poly styled modelling. His work is very clean and slick even if it has been heavily modelled, somehow he makes it appealing to his audience. The lighting used is just perfection, the shadows aren't too harsh - but they are just visible enough for you to see. 

He has worked with many clients & companies such as; Greenpeace, Facebook, Fast company, Wire and many more. If I'm honest I doubt I would've even considered low poly if he hadn't of started this style - so I really owe him a huge thank-you for introducing this style - not only to me but to hundreds and hundreds more.

I highly recommend you check out his portfolio / website - as he does have some incredible work on show, ranging from personal projects he has completed in his own time - to client projects. 

http://www.turnislefthome.com/

https://www.behance.net/turnislefthome

Photographers I admire - J Bennett Fitts.

Linking in with my post about 'Matthew Merrett" and his derelict photography - another favourite of this style is from a photographer called - J Bennet Fitts. Unlike Matthew's his work is more landscape based, specialised landscape based that is, he photographs abandoned and neglected swimming pools. I really like the compositions of each photograph, the atmosphere in each photo is very odd. It makes you feel like it has just been abandoned suddenly and overtime its degraded - personally gives me a weird eerie feeling.

These 5 photo's that I have picked out are probably my favourite photographs he has taken in this style. Everything is so remote and eerily creepy that it just makes the photo so much more engaging and exciting, you could almost use your own imagination about how these places came to be so abandoned / neglected and who was here before this degradation occurred. If you get the chance, check out the rest of these photo's in this style done by J Bennett - The work he has on there is extremely impressive.

http://www.jbennettfitts.com/

Personal Inspirations - Iain Macarthur.

One of my main inspirations overall is an illustrator called Iain Mcarthur. For a while now I have been following his work and the unique style of illustration he produces, it has that different twist on most things I have seen. He is an english based artist and graduated from Swindon College with a HND in Illustration, he hopes in the future he would possibly go onto to do a BA in Illustration.

His projects can be described as
surreal and extremely diverse in its own way. He uses majority of pencil, watercolours and pigment pens in his work and with these materials, he creates portraits of ordinary people and animals. He creates them in a unusual way by using exaggerated patterns and watercolour effects into the portraits to give a vivid explosion. Almost transforming their faces from something ordinary to something entirely bizarre and jaw-dropping...

I think another reason why I like his work so much is that I would LOVE to draw like this one day being so free and surreal in my work. However, its something that would take a lot of time and practice... and patience. I highly recommend you checking out his website / portfolio where the majority of his work is as its such a wonderful page. Definitely will be keeping an eye on his work and using him for inspiration in the future.

http://www.iainmacarthur.com/