Pictoplasma Book Review: Character Portraits

The book describes the history of Pictoplasma and how they wanted to form a new collection ‘The Character’ to ensure over time, no matter what the character’s medium it can be collected and shared for generations to come, safe from adaptation and reinterpretation. I found this really interesting as it aims to collect all forms of characters and bring them together as one, building bridges and communications between artists of all kinds.

I bought this book as I have started to obtain quite a collection of Pictoplasma character compendiums, I love the way these books incorporate a wide variety of visual mediums from photography to knitting! All characters count! Due to this I often gather a lot of inspiration when looking through these books and felt it would be the perfect time to revitalise my imagination since I am coming to the end of this year of university, to ensure I remain motivated during the summer.

I chose to look at 4 artists from this ginormous compendium of characters which I felt the most heavily passionate and inspired by to investigate new concepts and ideas I could complete over the summer:

Ross Plaskow: I really loved the childish charm of this illustration and was highly inspired by its design due to my recent explorations into children’s illustration. I really liked the use of textures and colour variations used by Plaskow in order to add depth to such a simplistic character. I find the way none of the lines are entirely complete really charming and would love to explore the development of an illustration using this style.

Wilmer Murillo: I fell in love with the work of Murillo due to the abstract concepts he utilises within his characters, I love how whichever way you view their illustration the artist uses the perception rule of pareidolia to ensure a character always remains visible. I found this extremely interesting and would be keen to investigate this myself. Considering my previous and very brief explorations into the use of symmetry and hidden imagery I would love to take the inspiration from Murillo further and see whether I could design my own paredolia style illustration.

Katiana Modestti: I absolutely loved the illustrations created by Modestti and the way they have manipulated everyday photographs into works of mild horror. She hides her characters within forests and rural areas before layering them behind multitudes of fog, leaving the only clear elements the stark glowing eyes of the creatures. I found this method of illustration really interesting as it isn’t something I have really looked at during my time in university so far. I would love to capture my own photographs once I am out of shielding from the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to explore the techniques used within these illustrations further and develop my own monster reality!

Anna Hrachovec: Following the completion of my commercial and character design projects I was immediately drawn to these adorable little gnome characters created by Hrachovec. It’s my belief they formed these elements by crotchet rather than knitting which is unfortunate as I have tried many times but never been able to succeed with crotchet! However, I couldn’t resist delving deeper into this illustration, I found it so appealing the concept that the entire illustration was created through crotchet before being placed and photographed as the final version. It isn’t a medium I have commonly seen used within the medium of illustration but it would definitely be something I am interested in exploring further, I would love to retry my hand at crotchet to see whether I can succeed in creating at least one crotchet character before the end of summer as a minimum with the hopes of success and forming my own illustration using this medium!

I have looked into a wide variety of styles and mediums during this review to ensure I remain open to different forms and mediums of illustration over my summer break as I want to ensure I continue developing a wide variety of interdisciplinary skills before refining too far into a specialism.