The World Illustration Awards 2020 Longlist features many amazing digital illustrations, but also some more unusual pieces using media from ceramics and collage, to printmaking and even neon lights!
We’ve rounded up ten quirky longlisted entries for you to explore and discover just how broad and diverse illustration practice can be. If you would like to learn more click through to each page to see the full submission, artist’s text and contact details!
Cecilia Abeid
Cecilia is a student at School of Visual Arts, studying MA Illustration as Visual Essay. Her piece America runs on Dunkin’ while the Favela sleeps uses ceramic sculpture to explore the differences between American and Brazilian culture.
Karol Banach
Karol Banach‘s embroidered piece is designed to make people smile. Although there are many problems in Brazil such as poverty and crime, this piece presents a positive vision of society there – fun, sunshine, drinks, music and sports. Commissioned by Brasil Warsaw
Alex Shahlaei-Beeching
UP There Everywhere commissioned this illustration by Alex Shahlaei-Beeching to accompany an article celebrating the company’s green credentials. The illustration is a living mandala made only from flowers and foliage gathered from the artist’s garden.
Dominic Bodden
Dominic Bodden’s personal project is a series of illustrations titled Rites of Passage, examining the relevance of transitional life events in contemporary society. The images were created working from life and reference images emphasising shape, scale and pattern, using chalk pastel, sanded paper, spray paint, and paper collage.
Eva Lippert
Horrified by the slash and burn of the rainforest, and the wildfires in Australia, Eva Lippert was inspired to make a large-scale jungle shaped like a burn hole, consisting of various materials and techniques imitating the diversity of nature. She has used knitting, painting, woven material and found objects, collaged and stitched onto a backing canvas.
Shira Noc
Shira Noc was commissioned by PubPlus, a tech company based in Tel Aviv, to create five murals and two neon lights for their new headquarters. The neon lights accentuate the informal culture and playfulness of the company, and are themed around the idea of a space odyssey. The neon characters were created in Adobe Photoshop and then processed as vector outlines using Adobe Illustrator. The lights are built from glass tubes, favouring a bold outline approach.
Marcella Peluffo
Marcella Peluffo’s project The Jump is an experimental project using wool painting, creating handmade images with a tactile quality. These tapestry-like paintings have been used to decorate a hotel in Milan, providing a double sensory delight: colours and shapes to look at, and the soft wool to touch.
Ksenia Volkova
Ksenia Volkova’s self-initiated project explores people’s inner state and hidden characteristics. The series is made up of five handmade ceramic sculptures using different types of clay, underglazing materials such as crayon and colour pigments, and glazes. The black wire elements were added after the final firing of the clay. The sculptures illustrate the unseen side of everyday life.
marcin zeglinski
Chicago-based Marcin Zeglinski created this series while on residency in Tokyo, Japan, capturing the Reflections of characters and fashion found on the city’s vast subway system, made using mixed media on paper.
Brian Gallagher
Brian Gallagher was commissioned by We Are Make & Martello Media to make illustrations to be incorporated in to two tapestries for Carrick-on-Suir’s Ormond Castle, run by Office of Public Works, Ireland. All the work for the project was done by hand in black Scraperboard. The 22 portraits in the series remained black and white, while some colour to seven household scenes in Photoshop. The colours attempted to capture the kind of dyes that would have been in use at the time the castle was built.