Visiting the Illustration Cupboard

For this project I visited the Illustration Cupboard in Central London to see some examples of different kinds of illustration used in books comics and TV. I've listed some of the pieces/illustrators I found most interesting and why:

Brian Cosgrove and Danger Mouse
During the visit I saw some original cels from the cartoon 'Danger Mouse' illustrated by Brian Cosgrove. What I found interesting about these illustrations is the fact the background was created in pencil and then the characters were created with what looked like ink on a transparent sheet that was placed over the top to create the effect that the characters were in the location.


I thought the differences in rendering style being combined into one shot was interesting as it's something I hadn't really thought about for my project. I also never thought about combining several different illustrations into one final piece. These could be really useful techniques when developing my ideas as a way of enhancing the finished illustration.

Kevin O'Niell and Judge Dredd
One of the things I'm really interested in is black and white illustration and I found these comic strips by Kevin O'Niell particularly interesting. I really love the way he uses the contrast of black and white to add a dramatic sharp appearence to his work without the need for colour or even other tones of grey. Like many black and white comic book illustrations he uses black to add depth to characters and objects or to create dramatic lighting effects. I also noticed that to create varying tones he uses dashed lines, hatches or other patterns to acheive this effect. I think this kind of block colour illustation might be suitable for some of the ideas I have in my head. One of which will most likely include some silhouette drawings and outlines so I've found this style to be quite inspiring. These illustrations were all done in black ink.

John Lawrence and Treasure Island
These wood engravings by John Lawrence for the Treasure Island books I found to be quite interesting. I like the bold black outlines and minimal use of colour to highlight certain characters and objects. It seems to achieve this overall high contrast flat style of illustration which I quite like but also looks very complicated and precise as some of the images show. In terms of materials I'm looking more towards pencil, pen and ink and digital at the moment.

Georges Remi and Tin Tin
I noticed this illustration in the brochure after the visit. I like the simplicity of it. The thick outlines and the block colours used to colour Tin Tin's coat and shoes. I like how this illustration features a varying stroke weight around Tiin Tin and his dog, I think it gives the piece a nice stylized look.