TRYING TO POKE A HOLE IN THE WORLD
SELF INITIATED CRITIC’S AWARD
PROFESSIONAL
2011 – IMAGES 35
Peter Strain is an AOI Award winning Illustrator working and living in Belfast. His work is hugely influenced by film and music and aims to tackle social, political and cultural issues with a highly distinctive hand lettering style, bold imagery and humour.
“I created this just after I had finished University and I was experimenting with typography and images – trying to put as much of my personality into the work. I wanted to combine a range of marks and drawing techniques into something coherent, using my graphic design background to achieve a hierarchy of visual information.”
“Having someone like Bonnie Greer select my work gave me such self-confidence in my ability – not only to create illustrations but to make work that could resonate with people on deeper levels.”
peterstrain.co.uk
BRIEF: Create an image depicting people form various walks of life struggling to make their mark (self initiated).
MATERIALS: Pen, pencil, ink and coloured in Adobe Photoshop.
RESEARCH: Internet, films, music. I remember looking through various screen-printed works and being inspired by how they would maximise impact through the use of limited colours.
PROCESS: Creating various sketches and marks and scanning them and collaging the elements into a structure.
RESISTANCES: Resisting the urge to make some elements larger just because I liked them.
INSIGHT: Throughout this piece I was trying to find a balance between space and content and this experiment has made me far more confident in handling and communicating ideas using many diverse graphics.
DISTRACTIONS: My 'actual' job at the time.
NUMBERS: Three – different versions before the final.
FINAL THOUGHTS: It was so worth taking the chance and entering the work into the AOI Awards.