Project: Music Inspired Imagery - Illustrators (2)

Gregori Saavedra


At first glance, you would say Gregori's work is incredibly detailed with a vast array of technical abilities, but once you see how much effort he puts into one single piece it is beyond amazing.

For this single image above he used over a hundred pieces of paper and splattered black paint across each sheet, and that was just for the rain. The model (himself) didn't just have a simple adjustment attached to the whole layer, he went into Image > Adjust > Threshold over and over again across each little bit of his body which eventually took him several hours. The land itself took him over 10 photos in order to get the whole landscape, but apparently that's not too many at all since it usually takes him 50 photos.

I think this piece is meant to convey a sense of fear and frustration with the curled up pose and the black & white scheme really gives impact to the image. With the rain going down on him it almost looks like he's being attacked, by what appears to be his own mind with the way he is clutching his head.

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Anthony Micaleff

Anthony Micaleff... I don't know why his name didn't come up as soon as we were given this task, but he is once again he is an artist who makes me turn into an overly affectionate appreciator of simple things. Normally his work is black & white and rather dramatic with a creepy atmosphere about them, but I instead decided to show one of his coloured works because it's meaning is so true and understandable.

The message inside (literally) of this painting is how our lives are run by corporations. Everything we do has something to do with the product of a company, even the person in this painting is wearing Adidas shoes. Anthony is probably trying to say that we should stop letting these companies take over our identities and just be ourselves. I think the bright colours are also meant to highlight the emphasis on how mainstream these companies are thus involving almost all of us.

I previously noted that his other paintings are black & white and seem to have a much darker message to them. The whole black & white look gives a much more dramatic impact on the message as well as make the painting noticeably negative. In those types of paintings I also like his frequent use of linen to give a detailed and slightly more interesting look to his portrait paintings. That's the only noticeable technique I managed to find too, the fact he uses oil painting on linen. The rest are obviously paintings with some big splats and dripping paints.

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James Roper

It could be because they're right next to each other, but James Roper's work seems similar to Anthony Micaleff's. I'm not sure why they seem similar, but when comparing the painted areas of this piece to Anthony's coloured work, it seems much more composed and shaped. The combination of colours (sometimes) and swirly shapes fit so well with the drawings and then explode into this huge blast of fun! So there's some normal drawings with composed shapes and patterns for some people, then the explosive and messy style of splattered painting for other people.

I think I got it right about the meaning of this series of illustrations when I was talking about the 'huge blast of fun!'. Because obviously we've got a woman holding her bra apart and would normally be revealing her breasts which are otherwise known as fun, but instead of breasts we are greeted by these marvelous swirling colours sprouting out of their bras. The funny thing is I didn't actually notice this as I was too busy admiring the detail in these colourful shapes.

The way these were made seems obvious. The women were drawn by pencil, and then watercolours were applied to them to fit into the bra, but I think this was either carefully painted on the drawing itself, or they were painted on a separate sheet which was then put into Photoshop and erased away until it matched the drawing.