Whenever we look at a representational drawing or painting that appears to have depth or dimensionality, we are looking at a “projection”, a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional object or scene.

There are several types or projections, the most familiar are “perspective projection” (traditional linear perspective), in which lines drawn from the sides of parallel objects converge on vanishing points, and “oblique projection”, in which those lines remain parallel (the “Sim City” look).

In any of them it is possible to create an image that superficially seems reasonable, but would actually be impossible as a three dimensional object. Many of us are familiar with these in the form of traditional “optical illusions” and in the graphics of M.C. Escher.

Andreas Aronsson is, in his words, a “Professional IT‑technician. Spare time multimedia experimenter. In Sweden.” He has a fascination with impossible objects, and regularly posts his own playful “Impossible Figures” to his blog.

These often take the form of objects (usually done in perspective projection) with shared sides or lines of connection that defy real-world geometry. They make for fun visuals; and examination of them generates a playful brain-tickle that gives us pause to reflect on the nature of the visual presentation of objects, what we take for granted and how easily our eye can be fooled into accepting the three dimensionality of lines in a two-dimensional surface (even if that surface is a screen).

You can flip through the posts on his site tagged with “Impossible Figure“. You can also read his page “About Impossible Figures” in which he talks about his fascination with them and his working process in creating his images.

[Via Neatorama]

What strikes me about Arthur Mount’s crisp, clean illustrations is what he leaves out.

I’m not just talking about the degree to which he simplifies his images, extracting from his reference material just those visual elements that are crucial to conveying the subject, but the line he draws (if you’ll excuse the expression) between a final piece and the temptation to add more.

There are areas in his drawings, particularly of faces, in which most artists would find it difficult to resist adding more, like shadows on noses. Mount holds back, leaving a kind of dynamic balance between rendering and abstraction that walks the edge, and works wonderfully.

He conveys much with his carefully placed and shaped areas of color (which I presume are drawn in a vector illustration program), choosing colors that, though they appear naturalistic, are actually not the colors you might find in a photograph or representational painting of the subject, but are carefully designed to “fill in” for a wider range of colors, a bit like bass players who fill in for rhythm guitar in power pop trios.

I first wrote about Arthur Mount back in 2005. Since then he has added considerably to his portfolio. In addition to his people, who include a number of famous faces, he has sections for architecture, places, objects and maps.

Both his “Storyboards” and “Instructional” sections contain some fascinating wordless storytelling.

Once you pop up a detail image from a thumbnail, you can move forward or backward through the gallery selections. It’s worth noting that simply clicking on the image will move you forward, a nice usability touch.

Mount has an extensive client list, including The New York Times, Fortune, GQ, The London Times, Popular Science, and a number of commercial clients. The Selected Projects section walks though a few of his projects in depth.

I really enjoy beautifully done diagrams, which at their best are a seamless blend of art and design. Mount brings those design skills to his illustrations, with a control of negative space that is the powerful foundation on which he builds his clear, forceful images.

Eric Feng, a.k.a. Freic, draws images of what might be called constructs, combining mechanical elements with stylized forms from humans, birds, insects and other animals.

He draws them in elegant vector lines, usually monochromatic, but with delicate traceries of softer tones and transparencies, giving them a feeling of depth and x-ray dimensionality. The resulting drawings have a charm and informality that belies their vector origin.

His… entities have a charming whimsical appeal and are fascinating in their blending of the mechanical and natural forms. A bobbin-headed, Buddha-faced, doll-like character fishes out of the head of an elephantine mechanism apparently equipped for water and air travel. Owls have wheels. His Buddha-faced child wears an airplane. Mechanical birds sit in trees, and monkeys perch on the branches of a mechanical tree.

The galleries on his site, Fericstudio, are divided into Fevolution I, Fevoultion II and Inside Out. The later contains animated pieces as well as stills from a longer animation by that title. (There is a link to a video, but I couldn’t get it to come up in Safari or Firefox for Mac.)

In the still image galleries, many of the drawings have options to view enlargements or image variations.

[Link via Netdiver]

Back in the mid-90’s, when the web was maybe 1/1000th of it’s current size, and digital art was in its infancy, I saw an image in a magazine (I think it was an illustration issue of Communication Arts) that grabbed my attention. It was a portrait image. It looked painterly, but with flat colors arranged into tonal areas, and had something of the feeling of gouache, but not quite.

The description of the image said the medium was digital (something still relatively rare at the time) and listed the software as an application called “Painter”. I had just started swimming in the digital art waters of Photoshop 2.5 and though I had seen plenty of digital art at by that time, most of which looked like identifiable “computer art”, this was my first exposure to “digital painting” (the use of digital tools and a pressure sensitive stylus to “paint” in manner analogous to traditional media).

I wasn’t familiar with Painter (at the time produced by Fractal Design), but that image was enough for me to say that whatever “Painter” is, I want it. Since then I’ve used it extensively, both for digital painting and to draw my webcomic.

Painter, currently owned by Corel, is a now a familiar application for most digital artists.

The image that introduced me to digital painting was by illustrator Nancy Stahl, who is still know for her exemplary work in Painter, though she has said that her clients tend to prefer her digital work in Illustrator; not so much because of the look, but because it’s easier for art directors to ask for changes (which some of them just love to do) with pieces created in vectors.

Stahl is a widely recognized illustrator whose clients include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, American Express, Sony Records, Der Spiegel, Business Week, Ballentine Books, Lippencott an others.

Her work is familiar to many digital artists through inclusion in numerous how-to books, including the Illustrator CS Visual Quickstart Guide, the Painter WOW Books and the Illustrator WOW Books. She has also been included in Roling Stone: The Illustrated Portraits, Walt Reed’s Illustrators in America and the Society of Illustrators’ touring exhibit Women Illustrators Past and Present.

Stahl’s boldly graphic images, whether painterly or rendered in vectors, have a terrific sense of color and design, and are textbook examples of how to see and isolate the geometric forms produced by volume, light and shadow. Hidden planes reveal themselves, and people, objects and landscapes shift between representational images and pure design.

Her illustrations sometimes have a retro feeling, harkening back to the poster and advertising art of the 30’s and 40’s. Her interests extend to textiles and crafts and her portfolio includes a section of knitted and embroidered images used as illustration. Stahl has also created five stamps for the U.S. Postal Service.

I’ve wanted to write a post on her work for some time, but was put off by her personal web site, in which the images were (and still are) so small as to be essentially pointless. She now has a portfolio site, however, on Illoz, and a portfolio on Workbook, in which there is a selection of images large enough to get a feeling for the appeal of her work. Her personal site still has some useful links to other info about her work. There is also a section of links on the Illoz site.

She also now has a blog on Drawger, in which her work is reproduced in much better detail than anywhere else and which includes discussions of her process.

She has a new book (one of those ones with a little painting kit included) called Real Art!: The Paint by Number Book & Kit (with Douglas Brenner).

Stahl is currently on the faculty of the Hartford Art School Limited Residency MFA in Illustration program.

[Link suggestions courtesy of Jack Harris]

Rian Hughes is a British comics artist, illustrator, graphic designer and type designer.

As a comics artist he became known for his work on Dare,, an updated version of Dan Dare, written by Grant Morrison and serialized in Revolver; as well as Robo-Hunter and number of other features for 2000AD and other titles.

At a time when highly rendered or fully painted comics were a big trend, Hughes forged a highly graphic, flat color approach in which design played almost as important a role as drawing. If not exactly in a direct lineage to the ligne claire school of illustration and comic art (see my post on Hergé), notably because of the frequent absence of lines, he was nonetheless a defender of the principles at the root of that style.

Hughes was one of the early adopters of computer graphics for illustration and comic art, using Adobe Illustrator to create images in vector shapes. His style was very influential on illustrators in the 90’s and he continues to be widely noted for his distinctive approach. He was one of the earliest and most notable proponents of the “retro-60’s” style that has become prominent in illustration and animation (see my post on Ghostbot, creators of the familiar animated eSurance commercials).

Hughes is also notable a graphic designer and typeface designer and is one of the most influential designers in comics industry. If you’ve ever noticed the high level of graphic design in DC Comics, for example, particularly as compared to the more pedestrian and cluttered design in Marvel’s books; a good bit of that influence is from Hughes. He was also instrumental in the design overhaul of a number of British publications lass familiar to American audiences. Hughes created many logos that comics fans will instantly recognize, as well logos for a variety of other clients.

Hughes has been noted as a font designer and has designed numerous inventive and stylish display fonts, many created specifically for illustration, comics or design projects he was working on. (Must be nice to be that facile. Need a font? Design one!) You can see an overview of his fonts on Identifont as well as on his own site.

Hughes’ website is called Device, (formerly Device Fonts), and features his illustration, comics work, logos, design and fonts, as well as an impressive client list and some short animations.

Hughes’ site doesn’t include much of his comic book work as many would like, (comics fans may find much recognizable material in the Logos and Design sections, though).

A new collection has just been published under the title of Yesterday’s Tomorrows (not to be confused with the book of retro-futrism titled Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future by Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigon).

There is an illustrated article about the book on the FirstPost site, and a more detailed review on Jog – The Blog.

[Suggestion courtesy of Jack Harris]

Nosepilot is a diversion: a Flash animation in which charmingly simple vector drawings morph and change and blend one into the other in a loose, not-quite-a-story sequence set to music.

I think Nosepilot has been on the web in one form or another for at least 8 or 9 years, and has been immensely popular at times. There’s a whole story that goes with that. Rather than rehash it here, I’l let Scott Thigpen tell you about it on his Artsy Fartsy Weblog (which may or may not be up for much longer, if not go here).

From the scrolling text in the glasses in the Nosepilot opening screen, choose your language (mostly for text and credits, there’s no dialog) and the animation will begin.

After ten or twelve minutes, the animation drops you off at a group of still images. Click around and they switch to different versions and enlargements of themselves. Find the right one and they link to another group of images that respond the same way. You can click through these images into other sets (by finding the right one to click on) for at least 8 or 10 sets. I’ve never taken it farther than that, so I don’t know if it goes to any particular conclusion (I suspect not).

Nosepilot is just a diversion, there’s no “point” to it. If you don’t like it after the first few minutes, you won’t miss anything significant by clicking over to the latest celebrity gossip on Yahoo News.

I admire the simple, effective use of vector illustrations which allowed Sacul to make the piece resolution independent (the movie scales up or down with changes to the size of your browser window).

Here is a link to Sacul’s animated illustration portfolio.

Addendum: I may be wrong in my assessment of the “still images”, having missed an underlying graphic narrative. See this post’s comments for more.