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'.