Martin French
Many artists speak about how you should chase your dreams and make yourself unique. Most of them come across sounding very cliché and boring. However, with Martin French I felt a kind of inspiration that I haven’t had before when someone lectures me on my uniqueness.
Martin is a very accomplished artist who creates his work by hand painting, sketching, or drawing and then uses Photoshop to manipulate the individual pieces. Coming from a three-dimensional discipline, I have always had a hard time appreciating the graphic design world but when Martin started describing how he created his pieces it facilitated in bridging the gap between the two. He defines himself as an Illustrator and designer. He studied at Art Center and went through a rigorous education where he learned to discover is own unique style through a series of trials and errors. After graduating, Martin went on to work for Microsoft and Atari. He now has his own business and has created pieces of art for clients ranging from the usual run of the mill office to the New York Times. When asked how he creates his work, he said that he prefers to build from brokenness and take risks. He begins his process by rough sketches of what the wants and then he moves into the creation of the piece. Martin creates large swatches of paintings, sketches, and drawings and scans them into the computer. Each one of these echo the movement of what the final design is meant to look like. From this, he uses channels to manipulate the layering of the pieces and the saturation of the colors.
When I viewed his art, I felt particularly attracted to it because of how organic it felt. Usually when I think of graphic design or computer based art, I think of very clean organized shapes. However, because of the process that Martin took to create his pieces it gave a depth and fluidity that would be very difficult to mimic if the piece was made entirely on the computer. I would describe his art as kind of a cartoon grunge feel. It has strong colors and bold strokes that creates intense movement.
Despite Martin being an amazing artist, I felt most inspired by his encouragement to push my own art into the world. Often I feel like my ideas have been done before or the feeling that I am trying to communicate isn’t coming through. However, Martin really emphasized the uniqueness inside of everyone. One of the most memorable statements he said was “the uniqueness is inside you already if you mine deep enough, you can create something that people want”. This motivated me to not feel discouraged and continue to push the boundaries of my art.
Martin is a very accomplished artist who creates his work by hand painting, sketching, or drawing and then uses Photoshop to manipulate the individual pieces. Coming from a three-dimensional discipline, I have always had a hard time appreciating the graphic design world but when Martin started describing how he created his pieces it facilitated in bridging the gap between the two. He defines himself as an Illustrator and designer. He studied at Art Center and went through a rigorous education where he learned to discover is own unique style through a series of trials and errors. After graduating, Martin went on to work for Microsoft and Atari. He now has his own business and has created pieces of art for clients ranging from the usual run of the mill office to the New York Times. When asked how he creates his work, he said that he prefers to build from brokenness and take risks. He begins his process by rough sketches of what the wants and then he moves into the creation of the piece. Martin creates large swatches of paintings, sketches, and drawings and scans them into the computer. Each one of these echo the movement of what the final design is meant to look like. From this, he uses channels to manipulate the layering of the pieces and the saturation of the colors.
When I viewed his art, I felt particularly attracted to it because of how organic it felt. Usually when I think of graphic design or computer based art, I think of very clean organized shapes. However, because of the process that Martin took to create his pieces it gave a depth and fluidity that would be very difficult to mimic if the piece was made entirely on the computer. I would describe his art as kind of a cartoon grunge feel. It has strong colors and bold strokes that creates intense movement.
Despite Martin being an amazing artist, I felt most inspired by his encouragement to push my own art into the world. Often I feel like my ideas have been done before or the feeling that I am trying to communicate isn’t coming through. However, Martin really emphasized the uniqueness inside of everyone. One of the most memorable statements he said was “the uniqueness is inside you already if you mine deep enough, you can create something that people want”. This motivated me to not feel discouraged and continue to push the boundaries of my art.
No comments:
Post a Comment