Claire Hummel: Another Artist Review

Claire Hummel is an American artist, who has managed to break into the videogame art industry. She is a self proclaimed 'geek' and it shows in her brilliant array of work on her deviantart page.. Her focus is on anatomy, characters and costumes and has done lots of work for the Xbox Kinect and even helped to design some characters for the game 'Bioshock' which I personally love. All of these attributes attracted me to her work, but then hearing about her made her even better.

Here's her Deviantart page (=

Her work has a quality to it that isn't too polished to not look like a drawing (unlike the 'League of Legends artwork I like) but it's still a high quality, and her character designs have just enough detail to not be overwhelming but still be encouraging. She has also designed a series of Disney Princesses in accurate dresses from the times of their stories which as brilliant, since they have an air of pin up style to them without distracting from the total innocence of Disney.



Mulan

Aside from these she also does commission work, as well as a lot of gaming artwork for franchises like 'Fable Legends', 'Ryse' for the Xbox One and even Microsoft. She says her work at Microsoft keeps her pretty busy so freelance artwork doesn't get too much of a look in.

Her work portrays an array of subjects that from Disney to Batman which appeals to me personally, for both content and style reasons, and her occasionally dark images are quirky and inspiring. She has a good range of work between polished character designs and scribbled idea maps for characters. She has work in black and white, full colour and monotone but each work has her style channeled into it. I will continue to look at her work as I develop my own characters for my motion comic.

Arty word of the day: En Plein Air. This means to paint outside, away from distractions like technology and the home.



The Little Mermaid

Aladdin

The Princess and The Frog

Kerry Darlington: A whole post about her.

Kerry Darlington is a brilliant Welsh artist who I've included in this blog because she is included in an interview in 'Artists & Illustrators' called "Mass Appeal". Her story is interesting because she came into popularity after leaving her job as an illustrator Craig Bragdey Designs to become a stay at home mother. She started selling her original works on Ebay, where she was spotted by a traditional art gallery, spiraling her career out to a much larger audience and helping her to develop her work while still earning money.

This is an incredibly lucky thing to happen to her, but her methods are still interesting to someone about to leave university (=





Kerry Darlington, 2013

Her most popular work is based around artist prints, she uses a mixture of paint and resin to give her work a really magical feel to it. In the interview she offers the advice "If you're starting out, buyers tend to want original works from you. You have to prove yourself with that before you go into print." This is encouraging to those of us (sigh) who prefer hand- rendering artwork but still like to work in the illustration field. Darlington also says that a lot of her work is bought by people who have never bought art work before, which highlights her ability to appeal to the masses with her popular themed work, focused around such childhood classics as "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan". All the added credibility her fame has given her also allows her to charge more for her works, upto £700 for a print. She also talks about how important a publisher is, to act as a liaison between her and galleries and keep promoting her, though she has now opted into self-promotion with the help of her husband.




"Wild and Free"

All in all she is someone to aspire to and follow, someone who's work I like and someone who represents the slight possibility of creating work that is non- technological but still popular to the masses.

Arty word of the day: Du Jour. This is a French term for anything new or fashionable at a certain time.