Some of you might not ever recognize this as a piece that I did. It looks totally different from any of my usual Japanese-inspired art prints. But I always considered myself a designer who made art prints. So designing all sorts of looks has always been interesting to me. If you ever see some of my commercial illustration or licensing work, you’ll see I have various styles.
When I do artwork now, it’s a combination of old-style-analog (designing, drawing and inking on my art table) and Photoshop. Best of both worlds for me. This piece, La Sirene, (means The Mermaid in French) was an early experiment in Photoshop. This piece is sort of like collage. To get this image, I layered all sorts of pieces of vintage art from here, there and everywhere. Plus I included ephemera (which is usually antique papers with some sort of type on them).
I think the piece would be much less interesting if it didn’t have type in it, but I’m partial; I’ve always loved type--- ever since high school, when I first saw 1800’s French poster art from the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec. I’ve always thought of type as not just words with meaning, but also as an essential part of the illustration. As an experiment, use your hands to cover up the type part of my image and see if you like the image better with or without type.
This is available as a mini-print.