Illustration

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Art Illustration

New Maddeningly Complex Doodle Drawings from Sagaki Keita

Japanese artist Sagaki Keita (perviously here and here) recently updated his portfolio with a number of new works from 2012. Keita creates composite pen and ink illustrations using thousands of densely scribbled doodles, goofy characters seemingly born from the margins of notebook paper that then form everything from Roman statues to artworks from pop culture. Several of these illustrations are actually part of a commissioned campaign for Expedia from late last year. You can see much more on his website.

Art Illustration

Deconstructed Watercolor Portraits by Henrietta Harris

Do not adjust your web browser, these distorted watercolor and gouache portraits were painted just as they appear by New Zealand-based illustrator Henrietta Harris who says her style “can only be achieved by having occasionally dipped one’s paintbrush accidentally in one’s coffee.” A pretty apt description for these dreamy portraits that seem to convey the precise moment when one becomes lost in thought or memory, an ethereal wind of distortion whirling temporarily through the subjects’ mind. Harris graduated in 2006 from the Auckland University of Technology and his since done work for Amnesty International, Vice Magazine, and BITE. She has a number of prints and several of the original paintings you see above available for sale through her website. (via flavorwire, ignant)

Art Illustration

A Portrait Drawn by Hand with 2.1 Million Ink Dots to Aid Amnesiac Benjaman Kyle

In 2004 an unconscious man was discovered behind a fast food restaurant in Richmond Hill, Georgia. He had no belongings, severe sunburn, and was nearly blind from cataracts. The man also had absolutely no idea who he was. After months of ongoing evaluation from doctors and psychologists it was determined he was suffering from dissociative amnesia. He adopted the pseudonym Benjaman Kyle and has embarked on a search for his true identity sparking massive amounts of media coverage and even a short film, Finding Benjaman, by John Wikstrom. He is the only citizen in the United States officially listed as missing despite his whereabouts being known. One strange aspect of this predicament is that Kyle now lives completely in limbo: for the past 8 years he has been denied the ability to obtain a new social security number which in turn prevents him from opening a bank account or having a credit card. The government argues that he already has one, but despite the efforts of fingerprint matching, DNA tests, and exposure on television, he simply cannot determine his true identity.

After catching a screening of Finding Benjaman at the Tribeca Film Festival artist Miguel Endara (previously) was inspired to help in any way he could, which meant making art. Endara embarked on this portrait of Benjaman using stippling, a tedious technique which involves a pen, patience, and an obscene amount of dots. The portrait took nearly 138 hours to complete, and at a rate of 4.25 dots per second, he estimates the piece contains roughly 2.1 million of them. The hope is to spread awareness for Bengaman’s plight and to help raise money through the sale of prints to support a petition to get him a new social security number. You can learn more about the drawing here.

Art Illustration

Carving the Moon: A New Woodcut Print by Tugboat Printshop

Since 2006 Pittsburgh-based husband and wife Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth have run the Tugboat Printshop, a traditional printmaking studio where everything is made by hand, starting with the giant slabs of wood into which each of their images are carved. The Moon is their largest hand-carved relief print ever coming in at 36″ x 32″ (91 x 82 cm) and will printed using two colors. If you’re interested they documented the process of carving the beautiful illustration which is now available for pre-order, and I also recommend checking out their other prints. (via cloud junky)

Art Illustration

Portraits Drawn on Maps by Ed Fairburn

Artist Ed Fairburn utilizes the chaotic patchwork of roads, trains, and rivers printed on maps as the framework for his large-scale portraits. Almost like a sculptor carving a subject from a block of stone, or a constellation highlighted in a clump of stars, Fairburn uses meticulous ink or pencil cross hatching to create portraits hidden amongst the topographical features. You can see much more of his work over on Facebook. (via artchipel)

Art Illustration

A Separate Reality: New Paintings of Dystopian Worlds by Alex Andreev

Trying to categorize or summarize the genre of Alex Andreev’s (previously) digital paintings is nearly impossible. Part science fiction, part dystopian future, the scenes are equally disturbing and beautiful, his characters inhabiting a world Andreev tells me is deeply influenced by Soviet-era literature, music and movies. Based in St. Petersburg, Russia he works primarily with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint and relies only on a small selection of brushes and colors to create each illustration, meaning there are no special effects or 3d-rendering of anything. Andreev recently published an art book, A Separate Reality, which is available through Blurb.com.