My illustration portfolio
I hope you like this video presentation of some of my best work. I edited this today with Adobe After Effects. I have never used that program before, so even though I bought a template, it still took literally hours to do.
I hope you like this video presentation of some of my best work. I edited this today with Adobe After Effects. I have never used that program before, so even though I bought a template, it still took literally hours to do.
This is not an officially endorsed poster. But somehow I don’t think Planet Ark and the other sponsors will mind. You know what they say in India? Fake it fake it fake until you make it!
This is not the final version. But it does show some of the effort I put into creating each of the twelve layers in this illustration. I have signed it “van den hooven”, because, frankly, it sounds better than “leslie dean brown”.
Seriously though, ever since I had this idea of the big M coming alive, I have not looked at the big golden arches the same way again.
So this artwork is merely an observation from travelling all around the world and having lived overseas. I have seen with my own eyes that some restaurants (such as McDonalds and KFC not to single anyone out), they do tend to take over the older towns a lot. And they are not always welcomed either.
The underlying message of this artwork is not that they particularly ‘destroy’ regions. It’s just that… they do kind of invade areas don’t they? It’s kind of like this all-pervasive business. You have to try fairly hard to go somewhere without seeing a McDonalds restaurant. The damage that you see caused here in the background is more… the fault of the West. So in that sense, the letter M represents Western intervention.
Now before I get sued, I should also probably mention that I ate in the McDonalds’ Engadine restaurant many, many times these past few months. Just to get more of a feel of the place. So, no I don’t hate McDonalds or anything. In fact I quite enjoy their food (sometimes). I do think they should add two new items to their menus though:
Because like many people today, I am slowly becoming a vegetarian — and the salad option that they offer is horrible. And I can another scene where the big M has great big circular saw blades and it’s chasing after chickens and/or cows.
In the absence of real, paying commissions, I have decided to just… draw whatever the hell I want. One of the most moving articles I have ever written can be read here. It’s about addiction. So I’ve decided to draw it.
I love poppyseeds, especially on cheese on toast. Judging by that young man’s exceptional writing ability, I found this story to be a great tradegy for those parents. Their whole website is about informing other parents of the dangers of poppyseed tea. Poppyseed tea can kill!
Their website is almost completely text-based. I tend to notice this because I am a visual person. So I wanted to draw an illustration for them that was so cool that people would be a little bit more pursuaded by what the website has to say. I also want to send a message to a generation of youngsters — that you don’t need to take drugs to be creative.
Here’s my latest illustration. This is a theoretical book cover redesign experiment.
On the left is the current book cover, ranked #1,004,963 in Amazon America and #1,607,617 on Amazon UK.
On the right is what I came up with (just for fun). This was quite a complicated illustration. All the fish were hand drawn and there are many, many layers.
Do you think the illustration is more attention grabbing?
Do you think the illustration helps to tell the story?
Do you think the illustrated version would see increased sales?
Do you think the authot could charge more for the illustrated version?
Which version would you buy?
#feedback #opinion?
Here are a couple of recent illustrations. One is a creative cross section, the other is a realistic or scientific cross section.
I chose a nautilus because they are a bit like submarines (they can control their depth) and you often see cross sections of submarines. I am proud of the command centre & control room that features a brain in a jar.
For the McDonalds meal, I just had to complete something, so I thought it would be fun to cut something that is not normally cut.