Eyes to Illustration: Researching illustrators

Monday, 8 October 2012

Researching illustrators - Christopher Corr

I had some positive feedback from my second assigment and I asked my tutor a lot of questions about different illustration styles and what makes a successful illustration. I think at the moment I'm looking at so many different styles and wondering what style to adopt overall and for each of the exercises. However, my tutor reassured me at this stage of my studies that isn't necessary but I should just concentrate on developing my skills and trying out different things.

I asked about more abstract/ almost childlike illustrations and what makes them good as opposed to just being a piece with less technical accuracy.
I'm starting to answer these myself but thoughts I'm having
- the context in which the illustration is produced/ intended purpose - does it fit the context/ brief - all determine how successful/ appropriate the illustration is.
- a lot of simpler illustrations have other elements which draw the viewer into the image - simple shapes, or colour combinations, engaging / emphasised elements eg emphasising the main element of a subject.

I looked at the work of Christopher Corr as per my tutors suggestion. His work is bold with strong colour combinations. Christopher's inspirations come from travel and he works on a lot of childrens book covers.
At first I wasn't so sure about his work as I wasn't overly keen on the abstracted/ simplfied people that feature in a lot of his work. However looking at his work more closely in the context he produces the illustrations I think they're actually really successful in converying ideas and drawing attention. The colour choices whilst bold aren't garish and I can imagine they would attract children to the book covers he works on. As a lot of his work revolves around people and travel I think his work really represents the culture of the people in terms of how the figures look and the colour choice. His figures are instantly recognisable as being his work yet they all do seem to represent people of different cultures.