Well here we are, the last blog post of the class!

I thought perhaps it was time to do something novel and have a concise post that actually adheres to the brief instead of the shambling hulks that currently make up the majority of my blog posts here, but we’ve gone too far now! It’s too late to change.

Something that I was thinking about when we were working through the last couple of lectures was there were several artists we were viewing who’s work was innovative, beautiful, and breaking new ground, but also reminding me of some of our own city’s most talented illustrators that practice across many mediums and disciplines. Many of those artists have been impactful on me as I grow and develop my style, some of them I’ve even had the opportunity to meet in passing or talk to at illustration events, which has been an incredibly special experience.

So, if I may break blog post tradition for one post, I’d like to show a little from several artists in our own city who I think are impactful and that I look up to, be that as influences, role models, or just hardworking people who’s work I admire while I refine my process, learning to speak in my own illustrative voice. These are people that I find exciting and that have something unique to bring, as with many of the artists we were introduced to through the lecture series, and are sometimes eclipsed by more famous names in contemporary illustration. To note, I say this having looked into each illustrator on the period list prior to posting this, so I’m also doing my due diligence here as well, have no fear!

Nomi Chi

With a background as an illustrator, Nomi Chi shifted and split her focus, taking up postition at Gastown Tattoo as a permanent resident tattooer. They’ve now gone on to have strong gallery representation and is consistently booked well over six months in advance at times. Spotting their work out in the wild is a real treat in the city, and my friend Logan is lucky enough to have gotten several pieces done by them.
Milk and Fang. Nomi’s work was one of the first thing I thought of when we covered Yuko Shimizu’s body of work, particularly in the pieces covering imagery involving nature and animals. Chi has an interesting perspective on how she portrays things in her work, noting that there’s a power in being ferocious or frightening. She harnesses this by often taking mythological monsters and portraying them as feminized, humanizing them in a way but giving them a new life by having them twisted into a form more easily identified with. It’s interesting, and something that I think can be quite empowering.
A sample of her tattoo work. She never shies from portraying the macabre or the eerie, something I love very much in her work. Sometimes you just need a good spook, which is something I gravitate towards often, though I feel pressure to conform to a more easily digestible style in order to be successful. It’s encouraging to see someone work their style and be hugely in demand for it without having to compromise it if their client is open to it. I respect people who’s work has fangs and isn’t apologetic about it, it’s far more interesting.

“The idea of monstrousness as being a source of power is important to me and really interesting to me, as well as the idea of intentionally making oneself ferocious.”—Nomi Chi, from a CBC Arts Interview. When I read this as well as some of her additional thoughts, it hit me quite deeply. Growing up, there was a lot of uncertainty, instability and fear in my life as a kid and I would retreat into drawing, turning that into monsters and other things that frightened me on paper. Somehow putting those fears into physical form, even if other people didn’t like it, was something that really helped. Being the sheep in ghoul’s clothing, metaphorically speaking, had a way of healing some of that, allowing me to meet those fears in a skin that didn’t have to be my own and take power and ownership over them.

Tim Barnard

Tim was an artist I first found by chance: he had been contracted to put together a huge illustration that was wrapped around the entire block of Main and Fraser where a new apartment was going up. I used to walk past it on my way home from work every day and I’d always stop to find a new character in these enormous graphic landscapes, losing myself in them. These things always left me smiling, but I could never find his name.
Later when I first started putting my own drawings up onto platforms like Instagram in order to build an audience, I was getting a few messages from a stranger who said some really encouraging things when I was starting out and told me I was making some really cool stuff. When I clicked on his profile to see who it was, it was a huge “Oh shit” moment for me.
He’s got a razor sharp eye for detail and possesses a wonderful ability to constantly create characters, patterns and textures that make you want to lean in and get lost like it’s some kind of elevated Where’s Waldo pop culture chimera. He’s got several murals around town and exhibited with Hot Art Wet City before they lost their space on Main and 6th, but he’s still going strong and putting out phenomenal and weird graphic illustrations.

James Stokoe

Stokoe’s one man project, Orc Stain. This is a graphic novel series released through Image Comics and the art for it is absolutely phenomenal, like full on pants-blown-off good. Even as someone who puts a lot of meticulous detail in their work, I can’t even come close to what James puts into his covers and splash pages.
His eye for character and environmental design is intensely creative and exuberant, bursting with wild influences across myriad genres. Small, everyday objects become characters full of bizarre charm, and his colour palettes are dazzling, complimentary colours often worked into iridescent gradients that give a fantastic sense of weight and momentum to his work.
Though Orc Stain seems to have quietly stalled for now, he always seems to be in great demand for covers from large publishers like Marvel in conjunction with independent work for Image, like in Dead Orbit here, or Andrew MacLean’s wonderful Head Lopper series. As ever, no matter who his client is he works like a god of argle bargle in his inking and backgrounds, creating some of the most satisfying ones I’ve seen in graphic novel culture.

Lyle Partridge

Lyle Partridge is Victoria-based, but frequently comes to Vancouver as an illustrator and tattoo artist, taking guest spots and showing at events like VANCAF and illustration markets in between larger commission and fine art work.
They have this incredible quality with drawing animals, and though they are drawing in their style and not shooting for perfect realism, they absolutely nail the crucial markers to make something nearly realistic but dripping with style. Just looking at the above and below pictures for example, every ridge, every splayed claw, the way the forms arch, they’re all there. The top is more sombre and haunting, the bottom playful and silly, but they’re both done with a layer of craft and attention to detail regardless, that’s something I think is quite special.
Lyle cut their teeth early on working for Cartoon Network’s huge hit Adventure Time alongside 2011 IDEA grad Ryan Pequin (who I used to make coffee for, back before I figured my own shit out, ha!)
Lately they’ve been putting out a series of wonderful DIY Risograph prints, I found one of the last ones at Cavity Curiosity shop in Victoria this winter and it’s making me want to try this over the summer, perhaps becoming the impetus needed for finally putting together a screenprinting and block printing station in my workspace at home.

Joel Rich

Joel is an illustrator and tattooer I find quite inspiring, having met him before he was really drawing much at all. I used to work at the JJ Bean in the Woodward’s building around six years ago, and he’d stop in pretty frequently for coffee and we’d chat a bit. At this point, I’d catch him drawing in the cafe here and there, and he had a more woodcut-oriented style that he was trying out here and there in his personal sketchbook.
He wasn’t finding the style was working for him, so he began a period of really experimenting with drawing, forcing himself to try and do something that was more unique, letting his voice come out. He began to publish illustrations as well with his partner, Nomi Chi, joining forces to put out self-published zines at festivals like CANZINE, VANCAF and various shops in the city.
What I’ve posted above are where he began to land: this knobbed, twisting and puffy aesthetic. The forms are gross, folding in on themselves with imagery reminiscent of carnivals, writhing cartilage and deformation, jagged bits and lumpen growths. He started to really stand out, and his work began to writhe with beautiful texture. This allowed him to start building traction from nothing, and shortly after he started his own endeavour, Black Medicine. Now it’s a hugely successful tattoo shop with some very talented artists on roster, something he built up from scratch after finding his own style through a ton of hard work. That’s something I hugely respect, and he’s a really nice dude too.

There’s countless other extraordinarily talented artists in our city, but especially with us looking outwards so often in illustration history, I do like to look inwards at times as well. Illustration is a small and tight community in the city, especially amongst younger artists trying to find their way in, and it’s inspiring to see who’s putting out some really interesting work right here, sometimes under the radar or eclipsed by bigger names with more fame from cities like LA and New York.

Despite how financially hostile the city can be for people our age wanting to make it through visual arts, it’s heartening to see there’s hardworking people making it work right here on our doorstep, and maybe one day people like my classmates and I can too.

Here’s to hoping, and a summer of practice to get there, bit by bit.

  • John

Sources and Imaging:

http://www.nomi-chi.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8275167-orc-stain-vol-1

www.timbarnard.com

https://www.instagram.com/neopetnecropolis/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/skeleton_jelly/?hl=en