I favour many artists and many have helped me develop and change how I view art as a whole. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Hikari Shimoda, Milt Kobayashi, Frida Kahlo, Vincent Van Gogh have helped me see art as either a place to express myself through different materials or really make a statement with my art. On the other hand the two artists who have influenced me the most is Natalie Foss and Michelle Czajkowski, both Illustrators yet very different.

 

Natalie Foss is a freelance illustrator (studied illustration at Kingston University) who creates dreamlike portraits using the materials colour paper and pencils "Created with only colour pencils and coloured paper, the drawings are both intensely simple and full of melancholic detail." - Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. I came across her work studying portraiture in secondary school studying art and design for my GCSE’s, I admired her use of contrasting colours and contrast with flat colour and detailed face “My work consists mainly of portraits of women and girls. I mix details with flat colours and I often work with a limited palette. My work is colourful, a little bit melancholic/sad, and a little bit fresh too. It’s kind of bright, but also dark!” - Natalie Foss describing her work. How Foss heavily influenced my art is visual as the contrast of detail is what strongly inspired me in my portraiture work along with the detail being highlighted with a contrasting colour. As you can see here her artwork example is on the left and my artwork is on the right, you can see the influence in the detail of the face which i personally think is what stands out the most when first meeting anyone, like a highlight to a first impression.

 

Michelle Czajkowski Is an illustrator who worked for dreamworks and was an intern for pixar studios with her designs. Her artwork is all digital and mainly dark with rich colours and with fantasy themes. I’ve admired Czajkowski and her work for years and she was a strong influence for my digital artwork as she is the main reason I started digitally. “to just add more life and color to the world through art, I’d be happy. I just want to inspire others.” and “I wish people would stop making art with the only goal being money. It kills the reason of art. I know it’s easy to say that — money is really important. But at the end of the day, if you’re only making something for money, it’s going to fail.” are my favourite quotes from Czajkowski because she makes it very clear about her thoughts on art and shows her worries that companies are the idea of money involved can invalidate art and put a lot of stress on the artist who has to pay bills and put food on the table.

How she strongly influenced me is visually, through medium and through inspiration: As you can see from the example from below (her artwork on the left and mine on the right) the colours and the presentation of the works sho

ws links between dream like and false reality of fiction is illustrated. I’ve always admired that the most in her work and was strongly influenced to use my own art to create my own dream like realities as a way to deal with struggles and issues I wanted highlighted. The equipment Michelle uses to create her artworks is an expensive display tablet along with the program photoshop, in contrast I use microsoft paint and a mouse. Michelle has an advantage from me as she is her own boss and gets paid from her art as I had to use what was around me, yet it still doesn't stop me and she is still a strong influence in my work despite the huge difference in programs and tools.

 

Michelle and Natalie has both strongly change the way I create art as before I drew simply what I just thought up or was told to draw. These two helped me gain my own style and help me soon understand how important Illustration will be to me for future career goals and further education as it’s a subject I wish to study at university. I believe the strongest here for the more influence is Czajkowski just mainly she has made a huge impact on me and how I create my artwork.
There will be more artists in the future who will influence me and change how i see art or how i create art as a whole but at the present and past works Foss and Czajkowski are leading factors to myself as a developing artist.