Michael Caputo

Michael Caputo is a graphic artist and illustrator who works across a range of formats and practices.
His work that caught my eye was the graphic illustrations of women screaming in horror movies.
They have a nice style to them which represents the kind of old style horror film and the images are bold despite being in just black and white.
He also uses this angular style with blocky triangles as a kind of hatched shading which gives them a pop arty look. It is a very interesting idea to create shadow detail.

Alexandra Dolgopolova

Alexandra Dolgopolova is an artist and illustrator from Togliatti in Russia. She uses a mixture of painting inks and illustration to create her work. It gives a really nice effect to have the extreme detail of the illustration contrasted by messier ink splashes. She work with some colour but tends to stick to monochromatic illustration which is relevant for the illustrations that I am creating.
Dolgopolova focusses mainly on faces but also works with some full body illustrations. I have not seen any of her work that strays from reproducing the human form but she does have a lot of talent for illustrating it.

Adam Haynes

Adam Haynes is an illustrative designer from Oregon in the US. These illustrations stood out because of their detail but also because of the impressive perspective angles used in each design. The designs are created from the first person perspective of the subject which makes them relatable and the images sustain attention.

This design in particular fits in well with my idea for printing on stairs or escalator steps in airports as a method of promotion. It shows how the design can work and relates to the other perspective drawings, only this time it is the viewer that has to view the design from the right position to achieve the right perspective. 

Andreas Preis

Andreas Preis is a freelance illustrator from Nuremberg in Germany. Again this work stood out originally because of the use of only black and white and because of the detail of illustration.
These illustrations show that the designs can be stylised (In this example with the use of lines which look a bit like fibres in muscles) and still retain realistic quality. It makes the images more interesting to look at and increases the detail and level of care and consideration that must have gone into the image making it more impressive as a whole.

Daniel Lee

Daniel Lee is a UK based architecture graduate who practices illustration in his spare time.
These illustrations stood out to me because of the relevance to my ideas in terms of monotone colour and style.
Style-wise the images use a similar style of cross hatching to create shadow and tone instead of another colour which is what I have ben experimenting with so far in logo design and in illustration.
The cartoony effect is not something that I have thought about in my designs as I think it would take away from the serious underlying theme of the brief.

Marcelo Oliveira

Oliveira is another illustrator with a specific style. A lot of the things he creates are in black and white which I am considering for the brief so his work is quite relevant.
These illustrations show a really really high level of detail which is one of the reasons that they are so impressive.
I can't tell exactly how the images have been created but they definitely started at some point as hand drawn illustrations and then may have been vectorised using Illustrator.

I want my images to be eye catching and the great detail shown in these illustrations shows how it can be really effective even in black and white illustration. 

L. Filipe dos Santos

L. Filipe dos Santos is a Portuguese illustrator born in 1978. His work is almost exclusively a study of human form, more specifically of facial expression. The way that the characters are drawn usually gives them a sense of animation as though they are a frame in mid movement which is a really impressive skill.
I think that this is a achieved through a slight exaggeration of scale in some parts. This is often used in animation because you can take great liberties with scale and proportion if images are in quick succession.
Used in the context of these illustrations it gives the characters more life.
Despite the stylised slight cartoon effect in most of the images they still retain personality and humanity and the focus is on the content of each image and not on the fact that they are clearly drawn and are not real.

The style shown in the two portraits above is interesting because it represents a messier approach to illustration but with incredible detail. This is a much more artistic style of illustration than conventional illustrative graphic design would conform to but it still creates a really nice effect. I like the fact that the illustrations don't have to go right to the edge of the paper or even round off properly; they can just end and you still understand the form that is being communicated.  

Greenpeace - Terrified

Here is another Greenpeace campaign poster relating to the ocean. In this example the designer has taken advantage of history to communicate the message. 

The delivery is really interesting and thought provoking, especially because it makes a lot of sense and communicates the point perfectly.

The illustration design is really detailed and carefully thought out to imitate the style of old nautical legends and also looks very impressive. Illustration is definitely something that I want to try and take advantage of more in my work so this is a good example.