082812_late night sketch

I've been way too busy these past few weeks between my internship at MK12 and my part time job which means I get no time to do my own stuff. I've been drawing a lot in my sketchbook but rarely do I get to touch color.

     This is a 30 minute sketch I stayed up late to do while listening to the Escape From Illustration Island podcast.

     I'm really interested in caustic color right now, I'm particularly in love with the work of Robert McGinnis because he's incredibly brave and bold with his pinups. The way he paints flesh is usually not in such a way that it's believable, or even has blood pumping through it, but the women become chameleons in their environments, fusing with the color compositions or fighting against it.

      I really admire this boldness because I feel it flies in the face of a lot of what I see more commonly practiced today in illustration which gravitates toward the perfect peach flesh tone in pinups of white women. I don't say that necessarily disparagingly, because I adore Gil Elvgren, who I feel is the supreme master of that Coca-Cola babe complexion, but it is really refreshing to see a figure become almost sickly looking because of the color relationships within the image.

   Sooo what am I trying to say? I guess in the exploration of my own work there are some things that I need to define for myself, one of them is how I'd ideally like to use color. I have undying respect for the way some of these artists use graphic shapes and since I've become obsessed with the Mod aesthetic recently, it's natural that I would gravitate more toward graphic color and shape. I don't quite know how graphic I will get but I feel myself being pulled. Thanks for reading.

eth.