This is a historical post from my time with the Open College of the Arts that I felt had merit to be included here in my Process section.

I think the exercise was to look at both a historical and contemporary illustrator and compare and contrast them. My choice was Charlie Davis for contemporary and Edward Bawden for historical. Whilst there is reference here to Bawden, the majority is focussed on Davis.

I have decided that Charlie Davis will be my choice for contemporary illustrator as I love his very clean minimalist modern take on an early to mid-century style.

Been a fan of Charlie Davis clean aesthetic for quite some time so been interesting to do a deeper dive into his work.

Found a Meet Illustrator Charlie Davis interview on the Adobe site which gives an snapshot view of how he started via a 4 year degress at Falmouth Uni and how his visual language is influenced by the both the travel posters of the 1920’s and Edward Hopper, two strong influences for me too. (Edit 4th May 2022 – Davis has a very clean aesthetic and you can see the direct parallels from his work to that of the two influences previously mentioned. It is also evident in the personal work that Davis creates, that travel and modes of transport, of getting away, are of interest to him evidenced by images of planes, trains and destinations. His ‘travel’ images have a voyeuristic, people watching style to them which deeply appeals to me. I tend to observe the world too but it’s in Davis’s ability to stop time and freeze those moments that make his work so universally appealing.)

Referencing his work, Davis posts only limited amount of commercial or editorial work he has completed and instead tends to focus on showcasing his personal work. In an era where we’re told less is less, post more, his approach is welcome and I feel it probably helps him steer his career the way he wants it to go and to pick and choose the type of work he wants to do that aligns with his own personal style and interests.

Earlier I singled out his travel and destination work but we also get other glimpse’s into his world through various sports images, people with dogs, birds and nature, both on it’s own and featured within his other works as supplemental characters.

Starting with traditional sketches on both sketchbooks and also using an iPad, Charlie mocks up his designs of everyday life going on around him and then works through a process of refinement and creation of shapes in Photoshop. Charlies’ whole process is shown in a series of videos also hosted by Adobe and gives a fascinating insight into how he works in real time.

Davis includes a surprising amount of detail in seemingly very simple images – his use of tones to show highlights, midtones and shadows is exemplary. However he skips details in faces allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks.

Lots of his work is in portrait orientation but he appears equally comfortably in landscape too.

Charlies website

Instagram

An interesting video with Charlie Davis

Charlie Davis’ portfolio on Handsome Frank – his agent representing him.

(Edit 06th May 2022 I have been looking back at the work of my historical illustrator Edward Bawden to see if there are any parallels to be drawn and I think there are despite their work looking aesthetically quite different.)

Both are observational artists but where they primarily differ to me is that in Davis work you can more clearly see the presence of humans but in Bawden’s work from across war, landscape, cityscape, commercial and reportage, the human presence is generally smaller. They are bit players to the larger landscapes or buildings.

Bawden tended to work across a range of medium whereas Davis is to date showcasing his digital work only. Davis palette is also more upbeat, cheery, summery whereas Bawden’s probably more accurately reflects the reality and is more documentary than idealised endless summer’s as is the case with Davis work. Bawdens palette is definitely muted in comparison.

Both show their pet loving side though and as mentioned earlier we often see the appearance of a dog in Davis work but for Bawden it was cats and one cat in particular, Emma Nelson, making several appearances in her own dedicated pieces.

Be interesting to see if Davis lived in the times of Bawden or vice versa, how the social, economic and political climates would have changed how they each worked. One thing is likely though, they would each remain respective lovers of cats and dogs.