Illustrative Journal 004
I ended last week and over the weekend feeling a bit like who am I? I was in the rut of an existential crisis… creatively speaking of course. I don’t know what brought this on. Probably my overthinking nature. In any case, me being me, I didn’t want to stay maudlin for long. So, Sunday afternoon I opened up Netflix and found an inspirational, kick-ass favourite documentary series called Abstract: The Art of Design.
For those that don’t know, Abstract is a series of mini documentaries focusing on leading professional designers, makers and creatives in various fields of expertise. There’s artists, architects, photographers, illustrators, graphic designers and even a toy designer. If you’re a creative, whatever your discipline might be, you’ll find all kinds of valuable inspiration here.
My go to episode is always Chirstoph Niemann’s from season 1 and it always manages to kick me out of a creative crisis. This weekend was no different. For those of you who don’t know, Christoph Niemann is by far one of the most well known illustrators and artists practicing today and definitely one of my favourite creatives. His playful and conceptual work is really one of the reasons I decided to explore illustration in the first place almost 10 years ago. For more insight into his unique visual language check out his Abstract Sunday Instagram feed here… you probably know his work even if you don’t know him maybe.
So… near the beginning of his feature episode, Christoph flips through an old sketchbook where he has taken an object (a red clown nose) and redrew it over and over again in different situations and on different subjects, exploring how it could be depicted conceptually and playfully. This one little clip erupted something in me and made me grab my iPad straight away and start drawing around my own object.
I decided, as you’ll see below, that my subject would be the classic red heart icon. I chose this as I was feeling a bit bummed out with the news feeds from my phone and the telly Sunday morning with all the doom and gloom in the world. With this series I simply wanted to fill my feed and my followers feeds with something postive and fun to counteract the negativity. It also sparked a fire in my heart and mind and I think I might make this a weekly series where i take an simple object and draw the hell out of it!
Here are the resulting heart illustrations for you which I posted on my Instagram feed on Sunday.
