David Hughes is an artist and illustrator.
David Hughes is an artist and illustrator.
David Hughes, born in Twickenham (in 1952? ') describes himself as "a graphic designer who happens to illustrate." [1] He studied at Twickenham Technical College in the early 1970s. [2] Towards the very end of his course, he discovered an interest in etching and produced "a small series of etchings based on a piece of jazz by Charlie Parker." [2]
Twickenham is an affluent suburban town in south-west London, England. It lies on the River Thames and is 10 miles (16 km) west-southwest of Charing Cross, 2 miles (3.2 km) south-east of Hounslow, and 2.6 miles (4.2 km) north-west of Kingston upon Thames. Historically part of Middlesex, it has formed part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames since 1965.
Charles Parker Jr., also known as Yardbird and Bird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and the leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and advanced harmonies. Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso, and he introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer.
After leaving college, he produced his first commissions for The Daily Express 's cookery page, but became frustrated and disillusioned by the lack of creativity involved. A lack of "sympathetic advice" saw him abandon drawing for "a year or so," to become a postman. During this time (mid-1970s), he was re-inspired by a Post Office colleague to take up life drawing again, and eventually became aware (through the work of "amongst others, Ian Pollock, Russell Mills and Chloe Cheese") that there was a market for his talents. [2]
In 1980 he was given a job at Granada TV, Manchester as a graphic designer, giving him the financial security of paid employment to experiment artistically. This led to a freelance commission from David Pocknell to "produce 40 black and white pencil and charcoal illustrations" for Eric Morecambe's book "On Fishing," which ultimately inspired Hughes to leave Granada in 1985 to become a full-time illustrator – a decision that some found hard to understand:
John Eric Bartholomew,, known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the award-winning double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984. Morecambe took his stage name from his home town, the seaside resort of Morecambe in Lancashire.
Another key moment occurred in 1988, when, having long been working on Strat and Chatto by Jan Mark he found that after his "early drawings in pencil/charcoal [were] rejected as too sophisticated," and he felt that pencil-work often suffered from printing techniques he experimented in improving his pen and ink style. "Submitt[ing] a rough pen and ink drawing to Pentagram", he found that they "chose to use it as a finished piece" as the cover to a book by Don Marquis entitled "Archy and Mehitabel". In late 1989, "he was invited by The Observer magazine to produce drawings for a topical weekly medical column, "A Doctor Writes" by Dr. John Collee," first as one of a number of rotating artists, but soon as the solo, regular weekly artist. Describing his aversion to roughing out his work, Hughes notes the immediacy and challenge of producing full work as tending to allow an artist to produce better work:
Jan Mark was a British writer best known for children's books. In all she wrote over fifty novels and plays and many anthologised short stories. She won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject, both for Thunder and Lightnings (1976) and for Handles (1983). She was also a "Highly Commended" runner up for Nothing To Be Afraid Of (1980). She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, and no one has won three Carnegies.
Donald Robert Perry Marquis was a humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters Archy and Mehitabel, supposed authors of humorous verse. During his lifetime he was equally famous for creating another fictitious character, "the Old Soak," who was the subject of two books, a hit Broadway play (1922–23), a silent movie (1926) and a talkie (1937).
The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its sister papers The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly, whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993, it takes a social liberal or social democratic line on most issues. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
In 1991, Gian Carlo Menotti, director of the Spoleto festival in Italy and his son Francis Menotti, invited Hughes to produce poster designs to advertise the 1992 festival, having seen his work in The Observer. [2] [3] Hughes also "mounted a major exhibition of his work as part of the festival," which subsequently transferred to the Charleston Festival in South Carolina in 1993. [2]
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, along with over two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular taste.
The Festival dei Due Mondi(Festival of the Two Worlds) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958. It features a vast array of concerts, opera, dance, drama, visual arts and roundtable discussions on science.
Francis "Chip" Menotti is an actor and former figure skater who was the president and artistic director of Festival dei Due Mondi.
Hughes was also asked by the Menottis to design an operatic version for their 1993 season of The Rake's Progress , a task he was wary of taking "because of Hockney's famously lauded version". In late 1992, Hockney's opera was staged in Manchester, and Hughes attended, leaving with the opinion that:
The Rake's Progress is an English-language opera in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings A Rake's Progress (1733–1735) of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on 2 May 1947, in a Chicago exhibition.
David Hockney, is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.
Attempting to 'update the biting satire of Hogarth's etchings', Hughes took a satirical approach to 'give the work a contemporary relevance,' utilising all manner of historical styles and imagery associated with sports and gambling, as well as indulging in 'appropriately playful bawdyness'. Hailed by Italian critics as a complete success, Hughes feels in retrospect that its biggest help to himself was that it "made [him] think about colour more, and form." [2]
After the "adrenalin-fuelled team work of opera", Hughes was 'kept sane' by creating press adverts for American Express as well as being given carte blanch (in 1993) by journalist Christopher Wilson to draw "weekly portrait drawings" for the newspaper Today's "Poison Pen" gossip column. [2]
He was subsequently invited to design another opera for Spoleto - The Cunning Little Vixen for their 1998 season, considering it:
His work on The Cunning Little Vixen included 3-dimensional sculptural collages "with letterforms and fiat colour", Ian Massey suggests that Hughes "uses collage elements as accents or as punctuation," and he concurs, noting that he has used simple collage elements from some of his earliest work. Hughes particularly favours the use of postage stamps in his work, not just because of what they evoke:
His Graphic Novel Walking The Dog, was published in 2009 to critical claim. The Observer wrote - On the outside, Walking the Dog looks like the kind of hardback a certain kind of man leaves on his coffee table so everyone can see how eclectic he is: expensive, colourful, mildly quirky. Open it up, however, and anarchy reigns.
2015 saw the publication of his net Graphic Novel, The Pillbox. Neil Mukherjee wrote in The New Statesman, Hughes has captured something ineluctably English in the combination of seediness, violence, sensationlism and humour; the book's biggest effect, however is the resonance of the present-day story, which will leave at least one haunting question ringing in your head. Hughes Was commissioned by The Folio Society(2015) to illustrate Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
His work incorporates aspects of illustration, graphic design, photography and animation, and his satirical drawings (often on the themes of "war, politics and social crisis"), have appeared in Punch , The Observer and The New Yorker , as well as being exhibited internationally. [4] [2] Hughes states that he rarely uses references, favouring "develop[ing] forms through drawing":
His work has also appeared in the Evening Standard , GQ , Esquire , Today , The Washington Post and The New Yorker , while Hughes has also produced work for UK TV station Channel 4. [5] His design work for the stage includes two operatic productions at Spoleto, in 1993 and 1998. [5]
Widely acclaimed as a children's book illustrator, Hughes also writes some of the books he illustrates, as well as illustrating the work of others. In autumn 2006, he provided the illustrations of Jan Needle's retelling of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame . [4]
Strat and Chatto (by Jan Mark), won Hughes the Mother Goose Award for "most exciting newcomer to British children's book illustration" in 1990. Bully was shortlisted for the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in 1993. Little Robert was selected by the Association of Illustrators in 1997 for Image 22, and was subsequently exhibited at the Royal College of Art, and later touring. [5] In 1999 he received a D&AD Silver Award for his illustrations of Othello . [2]
A vector graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to compose and edit vector graphics images interactively on a computer and save them in one of many popular vector graphics formats, such as EPS, PDF, WMF, SVG, or VML.
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An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video games and films. An illustration is typically created by an illustrator. Illustration also means providing an example; either in writing or in picture form.
John Leech was a British caricaturist and illustrator. He is best known for his work for Punch, a humorous magazine for a broad middle-class audience, combining verbal and graphic political satire with light social comedy. Leech catered to contemporary prejudices, such as anti-Americanism and antisemitism and supported acceptable social reforms. Leech's critical yet humorous cartoons on the Crimean War help shape public attitudes toward heroism, warfare, and Britons' role in the world.
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, which is the reason illustrations are often found in children's books.
A penciller is a collaboration artist who works in creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms, with focus on primary pencil illustrations, hence the term "penciller".
Leo Lionni was an author and illustrator of children's books. Born in the Netherlands, he moved to Italy and lived there before moving to the United States in 1939, where he worked as an art director for several advertising agencies, and then for Fortune magazine. He returned to Italy in 1962 and started writing and illustrating children's books. In 1962 his book Inch by Inch was awarded the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.
Harold Edward Hughes Nelson, usually known simply as Harold Nelson, was an artist, illustrator, designer of bookplates, advertisements and postage stamps, copper etcher and engraver, and lecturer. He signed his works with the initials N. or H.N.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the visual arts:
Edmund Joseph Sullivan (1869–1933), usually known as E. J. Sullivan, was a British book illustrator who worked in a style which merged the British tradition of illustration from the 1860s with aspects of Art Nouveau.
George Worsley Adamson, RE, MCSD was a book illustrator, writer, and cartoonist, who held American and British dual citizenship from 1931.
Harry Fenn was an English-born American illustrator, landscape painter, etcher, and wood engraver. From 1870 to around 1895 he was the most prominent landscape illustrator in the United States. He is also noted for his illustrations of Egypt, Palestine and the Sinai.
Cathie Felstead, born 1954 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, in the UK, is an English illustrator.
Eduardo Recife is an artist, illustrator and typographer from Brazil, known for his distinct collage style which combines vintage imagery, magazine cuts, textures, stains and lots of small details and symbols. He’s also known for his 35 typefaces, which the majority of it is freeware. Despite the young age, it’s been more than 15 years dedicated to his passion for collage, drawing and type.
Ian Miller is a British fantasy illustrator and writer best known for his quirkily etched gothic style and macabre sensibility, and noted for his book and magazine cover and interior illustrations, including covers for books by H. P. Lovecraft and contributions to David Day's Tolkien-inspired compendiums, work for Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and various role-playing and wargaming publications, as well as contributions to the Ralph Bakshi films Wizards and Cool World.
Biological illustration is the use of technical illustration to visually communicate the structure and specific details of biological subjects of study. This can be used to demonstrate anatomy, explain biological functions or interactions, direct surgical procedures, distinguish species, and other applications. The scope of biological illustration can range from the whole organism level to microscopic.
Riccardo Mannelli, is an Italian artist and illustrator.
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Karl Konrad Friedrich Bauer (1868–1942) was a German artist, print-maker and poet. Bauer's traditional skills in draftsmanship made him a popular illustrator and portrait artist in the early 20th century. In his later life he made a number of portraits of Nazi leaders. His poetry was admired and promoted by Stefan George.
Jules De Bruycker was a Belgian graphic artist, etcher, painter and draughtsman. He is considered one of the foremost Belgian graphic artists after James Ensor and achieved a high level of technical virtuosity. He is best known for his scenes of his home town Ghent, architectural views of cathedrals, war prints and book illustrations.
