Is a British illustrator who seamlessly integrates portraits into maps through cross-hatching and inking. typically speaking, his crosshatching starts as a series of straight parallel lines in a small section already outlined by the map, layered with another series of straight parallel lines perpendicular to the previous set. He never curves his lines, instead relying on the alternating flow of the strokes to create the precise details of the face.
In 2012 he began doing these map commissions, where he would carefully seek out a map in the clients field of interest, and restore and resize the maps if needed and then transport his clients into the worlds of these maps. |
I wanted my piece to incorporate two fundamental visual aspects of his work: firstly I wanted the piece to frequently take elements from the map and incorporate it into the piece, Secondly, I wanted the majority of the piece to be created in crosshatched realism.
Additionally I wanted to treat the creation of this map as both the artist and the client, I wanted to create a piece that would expand upon my connection with the area the map displayed, without putting myself directly into the piece. |
For this piece I worked with a dip pen and used and India Ink. It wasn't my first time using ink, however I still hadn't quite developed my skills of the medium into proficiency, so I was worried about the professional work of this piece. Fairburn's linework was very clean and precise, something I figured from the start I would struggle with. A challenge I immediately ran into with working on a map was the difficulty of differentiating my pencil sketch from the rest of the lines, a challenge that would be next to impossible to overcome without a pencil sketch , so I quickly decided to just start free handing my piece with the ink itself. I took a note from Fairburn's book and alowed the major highways in the area to act as a sort of sketch for the neck and chin of the deer, from there I added an eye for reference (I deliberatly wanted the eye to be the only thing in the piece that was inked in whille everything else would be crosshathed). I began to crosshatch inbetween the gray boxes (counties??) however my lines were kind of sloppy, so instead of looking like I merged the map and my work Faiburn would have, mine appeared just as though I was crosshatching ontop of it.
When it came to the upper half of my piece, Instead of using roads as the basis of my composition as I had done in the lower half, I cirlced some of the cirlces in ink and drew apple blossoms around them, using the blossoms as my guidlines for creating the branches. I shaded the leaves in much the same way that I shaded the deers fur, keeping the bounds of the counties in mind while I shaded the branches in a way that ignored the map altogether. At this point in time I noticed that the precision of my marks became sloppy and unrefined so I took a break and madesure to be conciencious from that point on |