I hope you’re having a wicked end to February! I’ve been busy updating my online shop, working on a new poster design and have an interesting sketch commission coming up next week, which should be ace!
I wanted to produce this blog post today to showcase my editorial illustration, as I don’t tend to showcase much of this on my blog at the moment (that’s going to change!), so I wanted to take the opportunity to showcase some to you.
Editorial illustration is a fantastic genre of illustration, that requires you to think on your feet, be conceptual, that I thoroughly enjoy as an illustrator. I love creating illustrations that require the viewer to think about the illustration at hand, and editorial illustration makes you do just that.
Often found in newspapers, magazines and publications, I’ve produced editorial illustrations for various clients and publications, and I’ve highlighted some of my favourite editorial illustrations below.
Psyched 4 Sport Editorial Illustration
Producing an editorial illustration for Psyched 4 Sport, (that I’m actually producing some more work for at the moment), I was asked by this great magazine to produce an illustration for their sports issue.
The article explained how important it is for coaches who teach children to be encouraging, supportive and motivating. Looking at grassroots football in particular, coaches who are the opposite of this can discourage youngsters from perusing football as a sport in later life. My illustration had to convey this in just one image.
Concentrating on positivity, I looked at sport clipboards that coaches often use to talk through tactics, and looked at the positive symbol to convey this idea. Other metaphors also occur throughout the illustration, like a thumbs up for example.
It was a great editorial illustration to produce, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Clerkenwell Post Magazine
Producing a gouache and watercolour editorial illustration for The Clerkenwell Post, a free magazine in the heart of London, I was asked to produce several illustrations for a variety of issues.
This illustration (that you can see below), reacted to the article that told the story of a wealthy individual who was nicknamed the ‘Hermit of Grub Street’. Telling the story of a street that was located in Clerkenwell during the 19th Century, it was a street full of lowly paid writers, where this mysterious character lived. This character stayed in this house for years, and had his food brought to him by his maid.
My illustration depicts how his bedroom space may of looked, with candles, books, and food on the table for him to eat. The illustration focuses on a limited colour palette, that seems to work really well within an editorial setting.
I was also asked to produce an editorial illustration for their January / February issue (above), producing a magazine front cover and internal illustration. This issue looked at the past and present politics in and around Clerkenwell, from Tony Blair, London buses to John Wikes.
This illustration was produced with gouache, watercolour and edited digitally, that forms a large part of my work. If you can see from this editorial illustration, it incorporates a map illustration and negative space combined, and if you look closely, you can make out a face within the space of the map.
Cracked Eye Publication
I’ve also been asked by the great guys over at Cracked Eye to produce illustrations for their up and coming publications.
Cracked Eye is an online publication that is solely online; from books for your tablet, phone and computers. They publish fascinating stories with great illustrations, which is where I come in!
I was asked to create an editorial illustration which is appealing to new readers, and create an artwork which perfectly supports the writing. Producing artwork for their up and coming books titled ‘Life at the Morgue’ and ‘Hope Street’, these were very enjoyable editorial illustrations to produce.
You can see a consistent illustration style and approach is delivered throughout these illustrations, and gives the text flow, that is so important with editorial illustration. Find out more about these illustrations here.
I Hope You’ve Enjoyed My Editorial Illustrations!
I really love this sort of illustration, as it requires me to think long and hard about how an image and idea is being communicated.
From The Clerkenwell Post, Cracked Eye Publication to Psyched 4 Sport Magazine, these editorial illustrations are just a handful of artworks that I really enjoyed producing.
If you would like to discuss your editorial illustration project with me, or any other illustration project you may have in mind, send me an email at any time. I’ll love to hear from you!
Many thanks for listening and visiting my news page today. You can follow what I’m up to on my Twitter, Facebook or Google + pages, I’ll really appreciate it if you do, and don’t be afraid to say hi to me! Many thanks again, and have a great day!
29th February 2016
