The Creative Processes of 8 Great Illustrators
In recent years, illustration has come back into fashion: some speak of a new “golden age” and there is no doubt that a great deal of interest has returned to this discipline.
With the advent and development of digital creation techniques, however, it has become difficult for a layman or even simply for a professional, to understand what the working method of an illustrator is, what are the technical steps from the initial idea to the finished illustration.
To shed some light on the creative processes of illustration, we searched the net if some of the greatest illustrators in the world had ever exhibited their working methods and, in fact, we found at least 8 really interesting examples. They open a really interesting glimpse into the techniques that can be used to obtain a great illustration.
Victo Ngai
Honk Kong illustrator, she now works permanently in New York, where she is one of the most requested artists on the market. She mixes comics and oriental figurative tradition, in very complex images and mostly in a fantastic setting.
It is interesting to see how an approach halfway between the traditional and the digital is solved in an original way. In practice, the outlines of the drawing, the color backgrounds and some details are prepared separately with different techniques and then recomposed and finished in Photoshop.
Yuko Shimizu
One of the most important illustrators in the world, one of the most influential: Japanese, she admirably mixes ink drawings, made with the brush, with coloring in Photoshop, following a technique used in comics, but with a touch of wholly Japanese fantasy and elegance.
We move from the first summary sketch to the drawing that will be the basis of the illustration, passing it over and finishing it with the luminous plane, and then moving on to the drawing of the contours and full backgrounds with brush (calligraphic, Japanese brand, of course!) And ink.
The drawing is then scanned and reworked in Photoshop, with a multitude of layers, with the overlapping in some cases (not in this case) of textures prepared ad hoc and, more interestingly, a work of redefining the color of the contours, similar to the process of the Ngai described above, which removes that sense of “cartoonish” from the illustration and makes it more elegant.
Emiliano Ponzi
He is now the most famous Italian illustrator in the world: his works can be found on the covers of books, in television commercials, in the major newspapers in the world, even on the post office of the Sanremo Festival a couple of years ago. Ponzi is an example of how illustration can be synthetic and poetic at the same time, of how a “simple digital painting” can communicate a lot.
Get Close with Jon Klassen
Jon Klassen
He is a Canadian author of children’s books: his hilarious works have been translated into 22 languages and have now sold more than a million copies worldwide.
It was amazing to see his digital working method, which mixes outline drawing (for insiders: with the Selection tool!!) and pictorial textures created ad hoc. The result? A kind of watercolor painting, very vibrant, with well-defined colors and shapes.
Tatsuro Kiuchi
Tatsuro Kiuchi is a Japanese illustrator highly appreciated especially in the USA. Its post-impressionistic style makes it very close to actual painting. In his videos we understand very well how he constructs his pictorial images by painting in Photoshop, with a skillful use of brushes and eraser, and overlapping of different textures.
Dan Matutina
For years, this Filipino illustrator has been one of the most popular artists working mainly with vector tools. His vintage-science fiction style, developed in almost 10 years of career, has set a trend and starting from some old tutorial on Computer Arts has dictated the line for the years for those who loved the geometry of vector design but wanted to “dirty” it with textures and shading to make it more interesting and less flat.
Veronique Meignaud
Multifaceted French illustrator, painter, comic artist, character designer for videogames, she uses a pictorial and futuristic style, mixing different media and tools with colorful images with a strong impact. It has always been one of my favorites and I had already talked about it a few years ago.
Her images are born, starting from a rather detailed line drawing that is used as a trace for the subsequent painting with Photoshop, in which the difference is not so much the technique, but the sensitivity of the artist in using colors, daring combinations and using overlapping quick brushstrokes.
Keith Negley
One of the new American generation of illustration, who creates poetic and profound images; it is part of conceptual minimalism a la Ponzi and Shout, but probably with an extra touch of restlessness and tension.
His creative process is very interesting because after a phase in pencil, we think he is the only established artist who makes a line drawing with Illustrator, therefore very precise and with regular lines, which he then colors by filling the spaces. At this point he prints the drawing and starts photocopying it several times in black and white, dirtying it with rollers and brushes. In addition, he prepares other colored textures in the same way that he will then compose in Photoshop and playing with the “mergers” between the levels he will arrive at what he thinks will be the most satisfying result.