The Illustrations of Nicolás Arispe

Even when taken out of narrative context, the illustrations of Nicolás Arispe captivate viewers. The Buenos Aires artist has crafted comics, books, album covers, magazine illustrations, animation storyboard, and much more. He’s known, in particular, for his anthropomorphic characters and fantastical settings, all tackling decidedly human and emotional stories.

“He entered the artistic world with his black and white drawings, but feeling uncomfortable in the official environment of art galleries, he decided to become an illustrator, since he preferred to feature in books and appreciated their potential as distributors of art,” Illustrati says of the artist. “At first, he began illustrating comics and books written by other authors, until 2005, when he published his first complete work, in which the aesthetics of ‘La madre e la morte’ were already present. He still features in several galleries, but only as an illustrator.”

See more on Arispe’s Instagram.

Topics

illustration, Ink Drawing, Nicolás Arispe

drawing, illustration, Lulu Lin

May 16, 2019

Lulu Lin’s drawings subvert the human form in surprising and engrossing ways, whether in her editorial illustrations or personal work. In recent work for MAYDAY magazine, Migrant Journal, and other publications, these cascading faces fill the page and offer a tension in both repelling and garnering fixation.

Carmel Seymour’s Imaginative Watercolors Play with Negative Space

Carmel Seymour, illustration, painting, Watercolor

August 29, 2014

There seems to be a history running through Carmel Seymour’s water colors, but it’s hard to pin down. Somewhere in the hazy but sublime gap between art and illustration, the paintings suspend an alternate reality in the canvas’ mid-air, depicting some hyperreal folklore in a wash of negative space. Seymour’s conceit seems simple enough: she places contemporary figures, such as girls in jeans and sneakers, in some private oasis, perhaps the figures’ dream landscape or perhaps some alien planet. But the landscapes where her figures exist are not so much 'scapes as objects; entities without a before or after. Her water colors are deployed in highly restrained and linear strokes to focus on details, and then exploded to disrupt the hyperrealism and maximize the medium’s atmospheric emphasis. The paintings have no clear beginning or end, but beg the question: what’s the story here?

Marcos Navarro’s Explorations of Humanity, Nature

illustration, Marcos Navarro, painting

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