There’s been an interesting trend recently in print and advertising work in particular away from the perfect symmetry and airbrushed cleanliness of vector art and back towards a looser form of hand-drawn illustration. I see it everywhere, from the middle pages of highbrow pop culture publications to the style sections of local broadsheets. And yet, it’s unexpected, especially so soon after the wave of vector art which swamped the print world just a few years back.

New York-based Australian designer Deanne Cheuk, who for so long was responsible for the beautiful artistic vision of edgy culture magazine Tokion, is one who noticeably shied away from embracing vector art during her tenure as the magazine’s art director. Which is not to say that she never used it, but rather that she always seemed to have a real appreciation for the subtle rawness of hand-drawn fonts and ink rendered design touches.

In many ways, her art direction veered towards classicism, which in turn encouraged countless of younger art directors to look back again for their artistic inspiration. Many of the better European, Australian and American magazines, for instance, are now dominated by more abstract, hand-drawn work, while vector art is finding its footing amongst CD packaging and gallery prints.

And yet, there are exceptions to this trend.

Vector artist Autumn Whitehurst, whose work is not only phenomenally good but also hanging on my apartment wall, is one obvious example. Her luminous, sub-realistic pieces are in demand, her style is immediately recognisble, and she’s never felt compelled to compromise her artistic techniques in order to get work.

She gave Web Esteem magazine an insight into how her beautiful vector pieces fall into place: ‘I have to use a photo reference to comprehend how light falls on a three dimensional form but the figures in the illustration rarely look anything like the photographs because myself and my friends are not such lean sleek glowing forms. It’s one of the biggest challenges but is also really enjoyable and is probably the bit that I have to get most creative with.’

So Whitehurst embraces the artistic freedom that vector art enables, whilst many seem restricted by the potential it offers to strive for perfection in every shape or object that they create.

Personally, I love the looseness and sense of absolute freedom that someone like Fernanda Cohen’s hand-drawn illustrations convey. She is getting a lot of work in major international publications, in a time when so many of their art directors are looking for that less realized style.

It’s wonderful to see too that personality has again been revived in print work. That a perfect rendering is not necessary to convey form. And that we’re looking within to interpret what, for many years, has been made all too apparent.

Whitehurst sums up it up nicely when she says. ‘There’s too much work out there that lacks the artist’s personal vision, stuff that’s being done because it’s a popular style used in marketing. The pitfall in working that way is that they’re taking part in a trend which will eventually die off.’

Very true words indeed.

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Excerpt from an as yet unpublished screenplay, My Reason To Be, in which a mature and inquisitive child seeks relief from the pressures and pain of his daily existence on the trains of Paris. Travelling by night his journey takes in the noises, sights, personalities and dangers of his urban surrounds. By day he studies at school — immersed in a claustrophobic world to which he cannot relate – and lives with his grandparents, both of whom are elderly and unwell. The household is practically run by he and his siblings, so he is able to disappear at night from his well-ordered home and school life into his ever-changing world on the trains. Opening scene: close up on the child’s face, the camera moving sporadically from his eyes to a full side-on profile as a piano and violin score plays in the background. He is sitting on a train, staring out the window into the black of the night. The sound of the wheels rattling along the track accompanies the soundtrack. He is expressionless – just staring out the window, contemplating the world outside. Staring. Thinking. After a while he closes his eyes, very slowly. The screen softly fades to black. [illustrations by Autumn Whitehurst]

A perennial favourite, Autumn Whitehurst creates seamless vector pieces that shimmer with lustful beauty. We asked her how reflective her illustration aesthetic is of her lifestyle aesthetic: ‘My illustrations are much more streamlined than my lifestyle aesthetic. I grew up in a family of magpies and must be genetically predisposed to collecting things I don’t need. I’ll need to move into a bigger space soon or I’ll have to start throwing things out because the visual stimulation in my house is nearly suffocating. If you’ve seen the movie Max, and remember Max Earnst’s house, that would be quite close to my ideal. But I would love to remix that with the aesthetic of those old French colonial homes in Vietnam and then I’d be quite content. How it would be possible, I have no idea’. Have you seen any creative work lately that’s really inspired you?

‘I’ve really only been looking at old movements like art deco and the work that came out Vienna towards the end of the 19th century, but I’ve not heavily delved into it just yet. I like the idea of revisiting modern technology with a new aesthetic and calling it Tech Deco, but I think it’s already happening. Lots of soft curves and silent spaces, we don’t really see what makes things tick anymore and everything alludes to the idea of comfort’.

In the big bad world of the beauty industry, there aren’t many companies devoted to having fun and telling it like it is. Enter Evo Research, an Australian company who understand the stress of a bad hair day, but quite comically remind you how to keep it real. There are no miracle herbs, Italian mud, or Moroccan sun-drenched tofu in these products. Just a healthy dose of humor and a liberal splash of honesty. [illustration by Autumn Whitehurst]

We’ve featured Autumn Whitehurst’s vector art many times over the past few years and checked in with her recently about work and play in New York City: ‘It’s dandy, thanks for asking. I’ve lived here for about a decade and I don’t get out into the city as much as I used to, don’t oblige myself to go see all the newest cultural happenings because there’s always something new going on, and yes I totally love that, but I’ve committed the last five years to my work and it’s made me a bit of a homebody’.

‘They say that you spend the first three years here partying, which I think is true because you’re really sensitive to the city’s energy — which is amazing — but then you get down to the business of doing whatever it was that you really wanted to do here in the first place. I’m trying to go out more these days, though, because all work and no play makes me a really dull girl. I think I’d started to realize that my well had gone dry and that I was working too much and not living enough’.

How would you say that your illustration style has changed over the years?
‘Well, some of my incentive for evolving my work into something more simple was so that I could have more time to do other necessary things. It was within the first year of my career that I adopted a very realistic style of illustration due to my client’s interest in that portion of my portfolio and I worked that way for a few years. It’s a really labor intensive technique. But I always had an issue with how close to photography the work was. It really didn’t allow me much room to play with the potential of illustration. So I’m stripping back much of what seems unnecessary to give myself not only some time but also some creative space’.

How receptive are you to new approaches to illustration? For instance, do you enjoy seeing people trying new things regardless of whether you think the illustrations themselves are particularly strong?
‘Absolutely. You can really sense when someone is enjoying what they do. There’s too much work out there that lacks the artist’s personal vision, stuff that’s being done because it’s a popular style used in marketing, but the pitfall in working that way is that they’re taking part in a trend which will eventually die off’.

What’s your favourite work of yours?
‘That’s a tricky question! I’m not pleased honestly with the majority of what I do which is my incentive to keep working, because like most artists I’m striving to communicate something in a way which clearly conveys my original intent, but I lose some control over what happens between my head and my hands so the image which results has happy and unhappy accidents in it. I guess that the way I’d like to answer your question is to say that the image that I have the least issues with would be an illustration that I did for the London Telegraph in which a woman is wearing a wide brim fedora hat, or Sweet but Sugar Free, which I did years ago as a promo image for my agent’s promo cards’.

Do you find that you constantly look at things subconciously with a view to how they would translate to being drawn? Is this draining for you or inspiring?
‘Most of my waking hours, my head automatically translates everything I’m looking at into planes of color, textures, and lines. There are times when I’m working so much that when I do finally get around to sleeping my mind is pulling bezier points around random shapes. Working as an illustrator has really changed the way I see things, and as a result what inspires me has changed, too. Part of me is tapping into the visual information that I can use in my work, but I’ve become more responsive to things that are entirely fresh to me, that have nothing to do with visual information…like the unexplainable exchange we have with animals, or that choked up feeling that you get when you watch a ridiculously sad movie, or how lucky you feel when you witness something that rarely happens. Those experiences make me feel three dimensional. It’s been a dense few years of work, and those basic things have come to mean a lot, so yeah, I’m easily moved’.

What do you enjoy doing outside of illustration?
‘I love reading, especially because I have a hard time articulating myself effectively so a good writer is very exciting. The last good book I read was A High Wind in Jamaica, though the ending made me throw the book at the wall. And I also have a garden in which I like to grow unusual plants. I love going to live shows. I saw the Walkmen last year and they were above and beyond fantastic. And I really enjoy drinking and then having a good inebriated debate amongst friends, especially if there’s a devil’s advocate in the mix. I like going out and seeing something mind blowingly beautiful, which might be a fine foggy evening, or an exhibition by some crazy young artist, for example. And when I have the opportunity, I really enjoy traveling. The last trip I took was a month spent in Vietnam with my mother’s family, and that was so fantastic I don’t think I could do it justice with words. I think my next trip might be to New Zealand, or Nepal. And if I had more time, I’d take up jewelry making or start painting again, which I haven’t done in a while’.

Where can you see yourself being and what will you be doing in ten years time?
‘I’ll probably be figuring out how to do what I do and raise a family at the same time. Kids are so raw I can’t imagine a life without them. And maybe I’ll have taught myself how to play the drums by then, and we’ll go on the road as a Missy Elliot drum and fife cover band. Maybe!’

[www.art-dept.com/illustration/whitehurst]

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Brooklyn based illustrator Autumn Whitehurst is a Lost At E Minor favourite. She recently told the Web Esteem website about her interest in capturing human figures: ‘I have to use a photo reference to comprehend how light falls on a three dimensional form but the figures in the illustration rarely look anything like the photographs because myself and my friends are not such lean sleek glowing forms. It’s one of the biggest challenges but is also really enjoyable and is probably the bit that I have to get most creative with. I plan to completely abandon photo references for the work in which there is no rendering at all, and it’ll probably result in something a bit wild’.

2006. There one minute, almost gone the next. With the door rapidly closing on the year, I thought it’d be a good time to showcase some of my favourite pieces that we’ve featured on Lost At E Minor over the past twelve months. I’m interested to know what you all love most too. So leave a comment on this post with the path [URL] to your favourite image or images that ran on Lost At E Minor during 2006 and why you love it, and we’ll add the image to this thread for others to check out. So, because of their colour, energy and beauty, my favourite five images for 2006 are — in no particular order — by Deanne Cheuk [above left], Autumn Whitehurst [above right] … and read on for the others.
[Top 5 images for 2006 continued]

James Alley

Anastasia La Fey

David Shulman

Share your favourite images by leaving a comment with the image URL below.

Autumn Whitehurst is one of my favourite illustrators. The Brooklyn-based artist’s work is clean yet sensual; the characters flawless but full of imperfection.

Autumn Whitehurst creates beautiful vector works. Her bold use of colour allows her often cheekily themed line drawings to really leap out, creating a sense of visual serenity despite the occassionally dark subject matter.

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Al Heighton was a runner-up in the Creative Futures Review competition in 2005 and his work has been described as having mixed messages peppered with adult humour, a bit of childlike innocence and a twist of his own North of England working class humour. His client list includes the Guardian, Financial Times, Plastic Rhino magazine, Digit, Computer Arts and Arkitip. His work is inspired by ‘a movie; a overheard conversation; perhaps a bit of literature … It will start out life in a sketchbook for certain’. He has some work featured in the latest installment of Nib Wax. [see also Marcos Chin; Autumn Whitehurst]