Absolutely amazing, detailed, delicate and intricate illustrations by Manchester based illustrator and designer Si Scott. His work around typography is absolutely stunning! All the decorative curves and swirls somehow reminds me of tribal tattoo but with an extra level of control and finesse to insert them seamlessly in typographic elements. Outstanding!
Superb graphic design by Marumiyan aka Marumagraph currently living in Fukukoa, Japan. On the selection above, Marumiyan’s work looks kind of westernised but it often has Japanese influences… He has a large panel of work for CD covers, books and graphic works of all kind.
Excellent illustrations for this series entitled Transitions started in June 2009 by Luis Araujo founder of The Ninth House also called TNH. Luis, who also is the creative director of Creativestem and The Raster, is really involved in the art and design world as you can see through the number of design related projects he is working on.
Last week end was the 2009 edition of the Newcastle Gateshead Art Fair at the Sage. Living only minutes away from the venue and having been invited to the VIP opening night I had absolutely no excuses not to turn up. There were quite a few interesting art galleries, artists and photographers that I’m going to talk about during the week starting today with one of my “coeup de coeur” Marie Blanco Hendrickx aka Mijn Schatje.
Marie is currently living in Paris and works as a illustrator and graphic designer. She’s half Spanish (father), half Dutch (mother) and has been travelling all over Europe as a child and even further away as an adult. Her work is based on fairy tales and a totally imaginary world she’s been developing (or living in) as she was growing up. She even thought for a long time Jimi Hendrix was her uncle apparently. She’s now an active member in the Parisian music scene where she creates CD covers for various Electro Labels like Record Makers (founded by the duo Air). Her work is globally quite dark but also very clean, pure and poetic which somehow emphasize the sadness of her wide eye characters/dolls.
Marie Blanco Hendrickx was represented in the Newcastle Gateshead Art Fair by Opus Art which is currently hosting an exhibition (3 - 31 October 2009) called Dark Surrealism where some of Marie’s pieces will be showcased with the like of Dan Baldwin, Claudia Drake and many more.
I ran through my old CDs the other day and found Infinity Land by Biffy Clyro which I quite like (although their first album is by far the best but it’s not really the point here) and hadn’t listen to in ages. Whilst listening to it, I looked at the album cover that I’ve always found strangely and scarily attractive. I remember I had a massive poster of the CD cover in my house when I was a student and it was the “masterpiece” of our shared living room at the time. Anyway, I tried to find out a bit more about Chris Fleming, the artist behind the cover. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to find much more than what seems to be an old student portfolio still hosted on Glasgow University website. Chris’s illustrations that are up there are really interesting though. I dont know if he’s still doing illustration nowadays or if he adopted a pseudo but I can’t find more about him. I would really appreciate any input if you’ve ever heard about him or his work… Thanks
Some interesting graphic design by Zaum, a company based in Norwich UK. Zaum specialises in graphic design, web design and photography mainly for musicians but also for other type of artists or persons in anyway related to art and music. Really like their work for Delta Rush and Jeni Saint.
Really cool illustrations and album cover designs by half Finnish half British illustrator Sanna Annukka. Sanna spent a big majority of her youth in Finland. In 2005, Sanna graduated with a BA (Hons) Illustration at Brighton University. Through a bit luck, Sanna got commissioned to design Keane’s second album cover. Sanna now works for Big Active and also sells her own artwork. Have a look a her work…
David Vineïs aka Sub88 is an excellent digital artist based in Paris. David finds his influence in electronic, modern art and architecture. His artworks are stunning mixes of 3D (I guess) and photo manipulation. The resulting pieces are floating abstract contemporary building. It looks like the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao but even more angular and levitating.
David also designed some CD covers for a series of Electronic labels and produced some high standard work for Chanel, Cartier, Sephora and Givenchy amongst others.
I couldn’t really start this blog without mentioning this artist that I’ve admired for years now. Stanley Donwood has been closely working with Radiohead since they started and he designed their very first album cover for The Bends in 1995. The 2 artworks above are probably my favourites; designed for OK Computer and The Eraser (Thom Yorke’s solo album). It’s also worth mentioning KID A, Hail to the Thief and Amnesiac album covers which are fantastic as well…
