illustration brief art in depth analysis.

Julia herself graduated from Kingston University in the U.K in 2007 with a BA in animation and illustration with her first major piece, her graduation piece receiving a lot of exposure on the internet and making its way to the front page of youtube as well as receiving one million his within the first two months. Since then she has gone on to complete an MA at the royal college of art and has been commissioned by clients such as E4, Skins, MTV, Virgin and Toyota.

      

This illustration is on a greetings card printed 6 by 4 inches and the image is of an elephant and a wild boar on horseback in the mountains. They are also satin coated to give better colour reproduction.  The artist who created the card is called Julia Pott and the piece is titled, "I love that you're here with me". Julia employs an amateurist style often referred to as awkward animations combined with anthropomorphises which she uses to explore the motivations between human relationships where by characters are represented by "mildly ridiculous animals". Although the style at first may appear childish, on closer inspection you can see the amount of detail that she has put into the hair of the animals and objects such as the log in the bottom right hand corner, the trunk of the elephant that is riding the horse as well as the trees in the background. This helps to create areas of visual texture where by the audience can tell by looking at the area what it feels like. Common to her work Julia uses predominantly muted colours with minimal vibrant ones helping to create a dreamy atmosphere and variation in tones which help the audience to focus on the key parts of the image. Where most artist would use thick bold lines to make parts of the image stand out Julia uses thin ones which helps to create this awkward style and the composition looks as if she meant the piece to appear like an instillation with each image standing in its own layer from front to back. I believe she did this because her work is meant to be personal, in effect she is creating what she feels inside, in her head from her experiences and the style is a representation of her personality. This layered effect to me illustrates the layers of our memories in combination with our feelings, each individual drawing stands on its own like each feeling is interdependent of another but to remember, we recollect specific parts of memories and feeling of the time and piece them together to recreate the scene in our head. Again I believe Julia uses her "almost" childish, awkward style to show how people become a "teenager" again when they are in love.

In comparison to the first piece which seems to be embracing a memory of two people who have feelings for each other, this seems to be more about regret. Initially I noticed the picture isn't as busy as the first, an almost barren land scape, dark and cloudy with lightning in the background. On viewing this picture you feel a sense of emptiness, minimal dull muted colours and the grainy texture used on the landscape create a tense atmosphere. The animals have been brought into the foreground and unlike the background the grainy texture wasn't applied so imidiate attention is brought to them instead. The same technique of "visual texture" has been applied to this piece through the fur of the animals, warm and fuzzy clearly showing that there is or at least were feelings of attraction between them. Their body language, lack of eye contact, hands in pockets and avoiding posture tell me that the relationship between them was at an early stage they maybe hadn't told each other how they felt and it was cut short. My understanding of the method behind the composition is that the animals visualy represent the moment and the background is a personification of what they felt at the time.

After looking at the work of Julia Pott, watching interviews and her animations I have defiantly concluded that she is a romantic, I have enjoyed exploring her style and her combination of texture and muted colours as well as her "awkward animations"  which are certainly a representation of her personality. She has defiantly taught me something about incorporating emotions into my work. As I will be creating an illustration themed by the "Alice" and "Wonderland" which incorporates feelings of needing to be connected and finding a way to fit in I will try to use similar techniques in order to bring the audience into the piece.