When I started to think about this project I was pretty much attracted by the vintage packaging industry and the idea was to create a sort of dusty grocery shelf feeling. My memories of this kind of design go back to my childhood when my mum used to send me to the local grocery shop. The shelves were stuffed with boxes mostly printed with a sort of very polite and severe 1950′s graphic design but some products started to show the emerging design of the 60′s, colorful and bold with intriguing characters which were very hard to forget. I clearly remember an obsession I had for an inflatable blond chubby girl who was the leading character of a german dairy company. The colors and the simplicity of the design were striking and hard to forget. As an illustrator I learned to keep that sort of obsession with me in order to achieve a result with the same precision.

When I was a kid Popeye was a reassuring hero far from the imagery of DC comics (Spiderman, Superman, Batman). I think it was the naivety of the character and the absurdity of the situations that made him so appealing. I clearly remember the iconic portrait of Popeye at the beginning of the show and it is what I am trying to recall in this illustration. The spinach tin is the other element I wanted to save from the cartoon but I thought of giving it a different status. The spinach tin represents the turning over of the unluckiness of Popeye and the return to calm, good times.

I choose a palette of colours different to the original, more related to my work but also to create something reminiscent of a 50′s food advert and the word Cheers is something Popeye would probably say.

P&C it’s a project which combine patterns with simple character designs. The idea is to choose one element from the main illustration and than develop it in to a pattern.

The inspiration for the colour scheme comes from a tea box I saw in a cafe in Manchester, it’s incredible how things can come together so quickly with just a couple of elements. Go to the gallery.
All the illustrations are printed as greeting cards now available in my Etsy store, take a look!

]]> http://www.messyfish.com/2011/01/pg-project/feed/ 0 http://www.messyfish.com/2010/10/im-a-nut/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=im-a-nut http://www.messyfish.com/2010/10/im-a-nut/#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:46:54 +0000 admin http://www.messyfish.com/illustration/?p=426

“I’m a nut!” it’s an original artwork from Messyfish. It’s realised with acrylic paint on vintage paper. I’ve been playing a bit with acrylic colours and masks in order to achieve an old fashion screen printing effect. I have to say it’s not been easy but now I’m quiet happy with the result. I like in particular the imperfections of the paint on the very fragile background paper.

Mixer is an illustration about the passion for the 60′s food and design industry. I always loved the imperfections of screen printing, the bleed of colour on the corner of a matchbox and the tiny dots of the printing mesh.

Smithers gets the corner office…the Macbook Pro…
I don’t even want to think about that company car.

I recently thought to work on some illustrations/comics
and give another chance to my passion for the 50′s and
60′s american imagery. The inspiration is in the
advertising industry rather than comics. In this particular
case I wanted to associate very different images, a framed
indoor situation, text and icon and  an image which
remember a 50′s car advert.

“You are nice like dipping fingers in chocolate” mixed media illustration.