Artist Analysis: Alberto Cerriteno

Alberto Cerriteno is a Mexican illustrator and designer. He is strongly inspired by urban vinyl toys, alternative cartoons and the pop surrealism movement.

This piece of work is a bear illustration that he has done. I am unaware of the purpose of why he made this piece of work, but it looks like it could be used in a children’s book or a children’s animation which is what I am focusing on.

I read on his website (http://albertocerriteno.com/profile.html) that he is strongly inspired by urban vinyl toys, alternative cartoons, pop surrealism movement and traditional Mexican artistic influences in his management of rich textures and decorative patterns. This piece of work is definitely a great example of all of those aspects.

Cerriteno uses a great amount of the formal elements and he makes them work very successfully together with his alternative pieces of work. There is a lot of pattern being used; circles, lines, spikes. I especially like the lines because it makes the bear look as though he has a furry, hairy texture. I also think that the lines underneath the bear’s eyes are admirable because they show that the bear has mood- we get lines, or ‘’bags’’, underneath our eyes when we’re tired. The bear’s right eye is also bigger than his left, which shows that he might be quite drained too. There are similar lines to the ones underneath his eyes beside his mouth, which shows movement of his mouth as if he is speaking or making a noise with his mouth.

The spikes on the bear also show a sense of texture, but a different texture to the rest of his body. These spikes on the outline of the bear’s body make it look as though if you touched him, it would hurt. If this is the case, other animals wouldn’t want to get close to him as they would be scared that he would hurt them.

The bear has a few circles on his body; the symbol of a circle means unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, female power and the sun. This could mean that the bear is female or ‘’whole’’.

The colours used are quite warm and neutral, also relating to the natural colours that a bear usually has (browns). The colour red is usually associated with anger, violence and love. Orange is known to be quite a stimulating colour, along with brown, and it stimulates these emotions of red. Additionally, white is said to represent cleanliness, purity and softness.

Looking deeper into each aspect of this illustration has given me a better understanding of what the purpose or message Cerriteno might have wanted to get across with this. The bear has a mix of both inviting an uninviting manners about it. Although most of his fur looks soft, the spikes on the outline make it look quite risky to approach. Its eyes look tired and drained. Both of these things together make me think that the bear is a kind (soft fur) person on the inside, but people see it as something scary and unapproachable (spikes). This makes the bear get tired of trying to show other animals that it actually is a nice creature, which causes it’s eyes to produce ‘’bags’’ (lines). It has the circles on its body to try to convince itself that it is ‘’whole’’ and loved (colour red) and the colour orange shows that it is stimulating itself to feel these emotions. The circle also symbolizes female power, which may suggest that this bear is a female.

As a result, my perception of this illustration is that the bear is a female, who is a kind, warm animal but other animals perceive her as a monster or a pain. She tries to prove to herself that she is whole, that nothing can get her down because she is already very happy, but her eyes prove the opposite. Her eyes show that she is tired and drained. She’s alone.

Although my approach to this illustration may be completely inaccurate, I believe that this is a very successful piece of work. Analysing this piece of work is going to help me when creating my own characters in response to Alberto Cerriteno because I have looked at each aspect of his work deeply and I can now base my characters around a certain story which I can portray through my illustrations effectively.

Feedback from Peers

As I stated in the previous blog post, my class peer assessed each others work in order for us to explore how to respond to set backs and constructive criticism and use them to improve our work which would also give us a wider understanding of the A2 assessment objectives. This post is to show what constructive criticism and feedback my peers gave to me.

Develop by Victor

Molly's work is good when looking at the technical aspect. Original ideas may be consolidated too early and a tendency to reiterate ideas is present. With her development it gets to a point where the ideas are stuck in one space and a new way of developing and refining should be found. She also uses the same materials so she should try and go outside her comfort zone.

Experiment by Mustafa

Experimentation is presented in different media such sketches, paintings and digitally. When doing primary research, Molly could extend the materials used because most of it is done using acrylic paint and pencil.

Record by Stephanie

With Molly's work she uses a broad range of formal elements such as line, shape and colour with some of her work correlating together. She focuses mainly on colour for every piece of work since it seems that is her main focus of her children book character. It would be in her favour if she used a broader range of formal elements such as pattern and shape.

Overall feedback

Molly, find a new way of developing and refining ideas; Go outside of your comfort zone and take risks. You should extend the materials used – more paint, graphics software and printing techniques. Also use a broader range of the formal elements such as pattern and shape.

Thoughts about the lesson

I think that this lesson was beneficial for all students as it helped us get a much wider understanding of what we need to achieve in order to meet the A2 assessment objectives. It also enlightened us of what our peers thought we needed to do in order to improve our work and our grade.

I will think and act on this criticism in my future responses.

Peer Assesments

For our lesson on Tuesday 15th October we peer assessed each other's work in order for us to explore how to respond to set backs and constructive criticism and use them to improve our work. This would also give us a wider understanding of the A2 assessment objectives. 

We focused on one particular assessment objective for each peer to asses their work. I focused on 'develop' for Mustafa's work, 'experimentation' for Stephanie's work and 'record' for Victor's work. This post is to show what constructive criticism I gave to my peers.

Develop: Mustafa's work

Mustafa's work is purposeful and he explores different ideas relating to his main theme of video game characters. He chooses one specific thing about a character that has already been made, and he focuses on it and creates it using his own style while doing it in much more detail than he would by creating a whole character and not adding as much detail. I think that this is very successful as it improves his techniques further. To develop his work, I think that he should bring all of the aspects that he thought were most successful of each response he has done to create his own video game character.

Experimentation: Stephanie's work

Although Stephanie has only used two materials, paint and pencil, her responses are still quite successful. To develop her work further, she should experiment with a range of materials and processes such as Illustrator and screen-printing. She has done a lot of work on Typography and experimenting with colour and pattern, but her overall theme is relating around the concept of interior design, to link all of her work together, she could create a few different typography designs which have been made using different colours and patterns.

Record: Victor's work

Victor has used a good use of the formal elements, especially tone and colour. He develops his characters using pencil, paint and Illustrator. Mostly, his work responds to Marvel characters such as Superman. I think that to develop his work further he should experiment and take risks with creating his own character and using different materials and techniques (such as screen printing) to develop these. Screen printing works well and helps to make the colours on a character stand out more, so I think that this technique would be very beneficial to him.

Artist Response: Alberto Cerriteno

I wanted to experiment with materials such as screen printing, so I decided to use my Alberto Cerriteno response to do so as in that response I had only used three colours (orange, dark blue and light blue), which I knew would work very well with screen printing.

Here are my responses using the screen printing process:

As there are three colours, I had to use three different layers for each colour. Here are the layers that I used:

I think that the screen printing was a successful experiment as the final designs came out really nicely. The most successful design, in my opinion, is the design displayed below. I think that it is the most successful out of all of the designs I did because it isn't perfect. It wasn't lined up in the exact place it should have been when putting the last layer on. The white parts in the design which are the paper give it a nice effect and I believe that it is more successful than the original design.

Artist Response: Dr Seuss

I chose to do a response to the film cover of the movie 'The Lorax', combining both typography and children's Illustrations.

The Lorax is one of my favourite films as not only does it have a great story line, but it is full of bright, bold colours and fantastic illustrations.

The first thing I did was draw The Lorax on an A3 piece of paper and thought of where I could place the typography so that it would be balanced. Once I did this, I painted my design using gouache paint. I chose to use gouache paint because it is very bold and makes the colours look block which makes the character stand out more.

Once I did this, I photographed my work and put it into Illustrator.

I used a graphics tablet to create my piece on Illustrator, as I do with all of my designs created on Illustrator. I used the 'Paintbrush Tool' to draw and colour The Lorax. I have the same colours on Illustrator as I do in the painting because I used the 'Eye Dropper' tool to select the colours on the painting and then draw the design.

For the typography, I changed the style of the 'Paintbrush Tool' to a calligraphy style and then drew the writing onto it.

I think that this was a successful response as I combined both typography and children's illustrations very well and the illustration stands out because the colours and bold and attractive. I would like to do another response to this image using this style and creating my own character that I can then develop further using a range of different materials such as screen printing.

Typography Response: King of Hearts and Queen of Clubs

In lesson with Mr Cousland we were given a task. Our task was to create our own design for a playing card (King of Hearts, Queen of Clubs, Jack of Spades, etc) using only typography. At first, I was a bit uncomfortable with this task as I had no idea how I could possibly complete this task. I started by looking at photos of playing cards and breaking them down by looking at all the small details. Each King/Queen/Jack of a sui
t are quite different from each other, which I had never noticed before because I had never looked at them closely enough. For example, the Queen of Clubs is holding a flower in her h
and, but the Queen of Spades is holding a flower and a spear in the opposite hand.

The cards that I chose to respond to were the King of Hearts and the Queen of Clubs. I choose these cards because they were both different and I would gain more experience by doing two very different designs.

Sketch Queen design

Illustrator Queen design



Illustrator King design

Sketch King design

I created my designs by looking carefully at the certain details and aspects of the playing cards. I described what I could visually see and then I used the main words to create my piece. For the King of Hearts, I used less words than I used with the Queen of Clubs. The King was a more simple design compared to the Queen. With the Queen, there is a lot more detail added using typography. It outlines the details of her face, whereas with the King, I used typography to fill the silhouette of the King.

I experimented with colour with the King design as it is the King of Hearts, so I used the colours red and black - the main colours on the King of Hearts card. With the Queen of Clubs I just used black as it is the only main colour used on the original cards.

I think that the Queen of Clubs was the most successful as it is a lot more detailed, but still simple, which is a great combination. I think that this task was very creative and got me to think of new ways that I could design using only typography.

Artist Response: Ernest Howard Shepard

I decided to do a second response to Ernest H. Shepard's 'Mr Toad' because I like the aspects of his work, particularly drawing animals in human clothing. My second response is of an owl. Again, like the first response, I searched on Google to find an image of an owl and then drew it in my sketch book in the style of Ernest Shepard.

Owl response in sketch book

This is the owl response that I did in my sketch book. I think that this is successful because it responds to Shepard's work well; it is an animal drawn in black, wearing formal human clothing, standing upright. I drew the same suit on the owl that is on the frog.

Owl response on Illustrator

This first version of the owl character that I did on Illustrator was an experiment with fast, scruffy lines. I did this because I thought that it might have given it a unique look, but unfortunately it wasn't successful and it looks very rushed and unprofessional. Because this response was so unsuccessful, I designed another version on Illustrator.

 

Owl response on Illustrator

As you can see, this is a very different response to the first, in terms of line and colour. This version is more successful than the first because it is more recognizable as an owl and as a character. The first one looks too messy and distracts you from the fact that it is an owl because you're focusing too much on trying to figure out what it is and why the lines are like that. This response has block colours, making it more attractive to the viewer because there isn't a lot going on and you can see distinctive detail whereas you cannot in the first response. 

My next step is going to be drawing more characters in the style of Ernest Howard Shepard and then experimenting with processes, techniques and materials as I have done most of my work Illustrator-based so far. 

Artist Response: Ernest Howard Shepard

 

Mr Toad by Ernest H. Shepard

Ernest H. Shepard's work is very interesting; I like the fact that he has drawn animals wearing smart, formal human clothing. This piece of work in response to his 'Mr Toad' piece.

I did this by searching on Google to find images of my chosen animal (a dog) and then drawing it in my sketch book in the style of Ernest Shepard. 

 

Dog response in sketch book 

This is the dog response that I did in my sketch book. I think that it is successful because it responds to Shepard's work well; it is an animal drawn in black, wearing formal human clothing, standing upright on two feet and smoking a cigar. Although you cannot see the dog's legs, you can see that he is not in a position which a dog usually is. A drew a similar suit on the dog that is on the frog, but changed the type of tie that he is wearing.







Dog response on Illustrator

Once I was finished sketching my character, I scanned it into my computer and then developed it on Illustrator.

The fact that the colours are not perfect is intentional. I like that they're messy and overlap into the different sections that they're not supposed to.