In this exercise, I am exploring how illustration has evolved over the past 50 years.  First, I will select a historical illustrator from a given list of six, research their work and the cultural context in which they created their most significant works.  Then, I will choose a contemporary illustrator whose work I like and explore and identify the difference in style, context, production, and imagery between the two illustrators.  I will then draw an illustration of each artist’s style, selecting similar subject matter and using similar media.

Choosing a Historical and Contemporary Artist

I decided to choose Kathleen Hale (1898-2000), the illustrator and creator of Orlando, the Marmalade Cat as the historical artist and Leena Kisonen, a Graphic Designer and Illustrator, as the contemporary artist.

Exploring the Difference

1. Context

Kathleen Hale

Kathleen Hale was born in Lanarkshire, in the south of Scotland, and she reached the incredible age of 101.  We remember Kathleen Hale for her series of children books between 1938 and 1972 about Orlando the Marmalade Cat, her most significant work.  Despite her very long life, her childhood was difficult with her father passing away when she was five, and she had to endure long periods of separation from her mother, who had to work.  Kathleen “was continually punished as a child by having her beloved drawing materials locked away; so she stole lavatory paper from people’s houses and drew and drew and drew on that.”  It was only after marriage and its “stabilising effect, motherhood and a growing awareness of the needs of children”, brought Kathleen Hale to channel her talents into the picture book. (Moss, 1972, p. 126)

Leena Kisonen

Leena Kisonen is a commercial graphic artist based in Helsinki, Finland and combines illustration, design and art.  Leena Kisonen comes from a family with a “Do it yourself” (DIY) mindset, and her mother would give her clean sheets of paper to fill with her drawings.  Her high school art teacher paid attention to her work and encouraged her to study further after school. She studied Graphic Design in Finland and Poland.  During her studies in Poland, Kisonen noticed Wycinanki, a Slavic version of papercutting folk craft prevalent in the mid-1800s, which influenced Leena’s paper-cut technique she uses to create her art. After graduating doing her MA in Graphic Design, she worked for an Architect and Engineering firm where she developed the skills to work with clients and learned essential business skills.  People started noticing her work via her online portfolio and requested freelance work. Her freelance work started growing, and she reached a point where she had to decide to leap into being a freelance Illustrator and Graphic Designer. (Kisonen, 2020)  Today her clientele includes Google, Snapchat and Helsinki Design Week.

2. Style

Kathleen Hale

I admire Kathleen Hale’s colour combinations and free-flowing lines.  Her style is cheerful, fresh and colourful, and is a style I would love to develop in myself.  The work of Kathleen Hale doesn’t seem old fashioned to me, but rather classic and timeless and being fantasy stories; it will probably stay timeless for years to come.  

Leena Kisonen

Leena Kisonen’s unique and robust style attracted me the most to her work.  She describes her style as a “blend of delicious candy colours, playful shapes and big smiles.” (Kisonen, 2020)  Kisonen developed her style over the years, drawing her inspiration from Nordic simplicity, Japanese aesthetics, and folk arts.  She creates her illustrations by combining paper cuts with digital processing, giving her skill a unique and warm handmade feel.

3. Imagery

Kathleen Hale

Kathleen Hale’s imagery is also warm, especially when looking into Orlando’s “green as gooseberries” eyes. (MacCarthy, 2000)  

Intentionally so, according to Elaine Moss, Hale said: “The text is for adults.  Why make reading to children at the end of a long, hard day a chore?  Those sophisticated jokes are for the parents, but I make sure the jokes never deprive the child of the sequence of the story; that and the pictures are for the children who look right into the illustrations and seize on the detail in a way adults don’t bother to do.”  The detail and colours in Kathleen Hale’s images are inviting, and the characters became like family.  Referring to the characters, Kathleen Hale said: “ I was writing about them during the War, you see, when children were evacuated – terrified and homesick in strange surroundings, fathers being killed, mothers running off I thought, life will one day return to normal.  I want these children to see what family love should be like, so that they will strive to get it for themselves when they are older.” (Moss, 1972)

Leena Kisonen

Leena Kisonen’s signature illustrations are her paper-cut images with a solid Polish Wycinanki and Folk Art influence, playing around with the character’s proportion; her art elements are colourful and big, with a friendly and inviting feel.  Kisonen’s images appeal to a broad spectrum of people of all ages, making her art an effective marketing and advertising tool.

4. Production

Kathleen Hale

Kathleen Hale used lithographic separation for her first Orlando book; before World War Two, there was no alternative to hand separation.  “De Brunhoff was working that way in France; Ardizzone and Kathleen Hale began to make lithographic picture books in England.  These three can be said to have pioneered the full-colour picture books we know today. (Moss, 1972)  Hale also used watercolour, pencil, oil paints, collage and assemblage as her medium of choice.

Leena Kisonen

Kisonen creates work for print, digital, textiles and packaging, but her creative process has changed over the years to a faster and more effective workflow. At first, she scanned her finished paper-cut designs into Photoshop, but this method was time-consuming and challenging to edit and resize.

She then decided to create her designs on black paper, scanning them into Photoshop and changing the colour.  The elements will then be imported into Adobe Illustrator and converted into vector images where she does her finishing touches.  The final product is in vector, not handmade, even though the process is handmade. As a commercial artist, Leena Kisonen resize her work and apply it to a wide variety of applications and formats; for this reason, it makes sense that her final artwork is in digital form. (Kisonen, 2020)

Illustration in Hale’s Style

Kathleen Hale used watercolour, pencil and ink to do her illustrations, and I will do the same for this illustration.  My subject matter will be my French Poodle, Juliette, similar to Kathleen Hale, who used her pets as an inspiration to draw Orlando. 

I have experimented with watercolour in the past and enjoy the medium immensely.  While doing this piece, I realised how challenging it is to draw with my waterproof Multi-liner pen on the rough paper to add detail, but it still worked well, although I will use a smoother paper next time and not the 300g/m2 cold-pressed paper I used for this art piece.  Kathleen Hale used coloured line strokes in her illustrations that seem to be lithography chalk strokes.  I have tried to get the same effect with watercolour pencils, but the watercolour pencils gave me a softer, almost dotted texture than what I was after due to the textured paper, so I have decided to rather use coloured Sharpies to get a similar effect to the chalk strokes of Hale’s illustrations.

Illustration in Kisonen’s style

I have decided to combine the colour scheme of Kisonen’s artwork in figure 8 with the subject matter of her illustration in figure 9.  Starting in my sketchbook, I’ve designed the focal-point paper-cut by doing a pencil sketch first.  My inspiration came from using Juliette, my French Poodle, as a subject matter.

My workflow for Kisonen’s style illustration looked like this:

1. I have taken a few photos of Juliette, my Poodle, from different angles to use as a reference to draw a side view in pencil.
2. Then I have made a photocopy of the drawing and created a paper-cutting.
3. I have printed the flowers from the digital drawing I have made and start working on the composition. 
4. First, I thought it would look more like paper-cuts if I pile the cuttings behind the dog, but I decided later it works better in an arranged composition.
5. The background was made by rolling ink out and printing it onto paper, similar to a monoprint.  I then scanned the print into Photoshop and adjusted the colour to a brighter yellow.
6. The print has given me an interesting background which I later changed to pink.
7. I have decided to change the red palm tree into a simpler shape.
8. The near to completed illustration.

Finally, it may be concluded that illustration has not changed much in 50 years, except for the production of the final artwork.  Today it makes sense that the final piece is in digital form, as it is easy to resize and apply to various applications.   I have learned a lot by pretending to “steal” these two artists style for the sake of this exercise.  I almost felt guilty to copy their style, but it has taught me that even though a style looks easy to replicate, it is not always what will come out once you try to achieve the same effect.  It is clear to me now that each artist has their own style that flows naturally from life experiences and observations, and because we are all so unique, this experience is going to be different for every artist.  I think it is essential to find your unique style, just like these two incredible ladies did. 

References:

Kisonen, L., 2020. My Story: How I became a freelance illustrator. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcUiP36kxyM
[Accessed 24 July 2021].

Kisonen, L., 2020. How I created my Illustration Style. [Online] 
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeenaKisonen/featured
[Accessed 24 July 2021].

MacCarthy, F., 2000. Obituary: Kathleen Hale, London, England: Guardian Newspaper.

Moss, E., 1972. Kathleen Hale and Orlando the Marmalade Cat. Signal, Volume 9, p. 123.

Kisonen, L., 2020. Leena Kisonen/About. [Online] 
Available at: https://leenakisonen.com/about
[Accessed 27 July 2021].