Reggie Pedro, English Illustrator, Born 1972

Pedro’s work depicts the interplay between the representation of characters and his unique painting technique. Although inevitably influenced by his London upbringing, the main subject of Pedro’s work is human emotion, civil unrest, love, boredom, isolation, exuberance and spirituality.

Pedro is best known for his record cover artwork for Mercury award-winning band Gomez between 1998 and 1999, for which he won an award for best illustrator within the music industry in 2000.
He was then commissioned to produce another four record covers for the band, resulting in his work appearing in music stores world-wide and being seen by the mainstream. It is this work that he is most recognisable for today.

Awards include Best Illustrator within the Music Industry for work done in 1999 (2000); winner of the Parallel Media Prize, where he was awarded £4,000 for Best Illustrator at the Royal College of Art ; and winner of the Painters-Stainers Award of Excellence at the Royal College of Art.Reggie Okerheire Pedro's approach to his work would appear, at least in a non-literal sense, to be a reflection on his perceptions and experiences, growing up in London.

I really appriciate Pedro's work in many ways. For example in how his characters are portrayed within the bold use of colour, outlines, flat planes and surfaces, occasional handwritten text sometimes giving a hint, or emphasising a theme or subject-matter within multi-layered images that trigger the viewer's imagination through their glimpses of possible narratives.

This is exactly what I want to achieve in my current sequence illustration and at the moment I am strongly influenced by the work of Pedro. It is when dealing with these aspects of the work, ignoring the urban settings, the fact that Reggie attempts to give life to his paintings is a clear display. Also, the way that Reggie uses the visual medium of paint to articulate his ideas shouldn't be seen as a technique which has been given little thought or as 'an outdated medium in today's computer generated image world.' But on the contrary, paint which is essentially pigment like any other use of colour can be used, and has been used in a variety of ways depending on whose hands are using it and how they view the world around them in relation to how they treat the medium. His paintings are the site of tension between representation and creative intervention, between seriousness and upliftment or humour.

'There is a lot of struggle that takes place in the creation of his work, struggles within figuration, semi-abstraction, and abstraction. His will is to render our existences as sincerely as possible without losing sight of his creative artistic endeavours.'

Dave McKean English artist, Born 1963

Bill Sienkiewicz.

Dave Tench McKean is an illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, film maker and musician.

His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture.

His work during his early career was often compared to that of Bill Sienkiewicz, (as presented above, left). The similarities are clear to see between the artists' work and it shows that Sienkiewicz work had strong influences on McKeans work.

McKean's striking and influential works have won him many awards, a worldwide following of fans and admirers, and a highly-respected reputation as an artist. Underlying his many different artistic styles, accomplished in a variety of media — line art, painting, model-building, photography, digital manipulation and typography.

The reason I decided to research the work of McKean was because of his many styles and vast media which is a way I like to work. I find his approach influential: for example using materials, collage and found objects to represent his images which is what i am trying to achieve with my current narrative project. By having a structure to my sequence and clues that are embodied with in my choice of media. Not only this but his choice of composition works very effectively.

Besides the production of his spectacular mainstream comics, McKean ambitiously kept busy with loads of other projects. Best-known of these are his legendary covers for the 'Sandman' comics, written by his friend Neil Gaiman. After the completion of this best-selling fantasy series, McKean's covers, digitally manipulated images of painting with scraps of ripped-up lace and over-exposed photographs, were collected in the volume 'Sandman Dust Covers'.