This And That: Illustration in the Hand Drawn Style

Here are some thoughts from illustrator Aaron Barker on a popular style in advertisement design today: the hand drawn look.

Hey, can you find what’s wrong with these pictures?

Remember those picture puzzles that contain wacky absurdities waiting to be discovered? Take a look at these two illustrations. That’s right! There IS a giraffe riding in the car! And in the picture below that there is… uh… some guy with a red notebook. Its easy to see, in my pedantic opinion, why one picture is much more dynamic than the other.

Recently I was looking for interesting illustrations with the “hand drawn” look and came across these examples. The top one is from an art magazine called The Drama, sadly no longer in print, issue 9 was their last.

The bottom picture is from a TARGET superstore student brochure. I was really drawn (no pun intended) to the city scene with the giraffe and commuters in The Drama, but the TARGET brochure, while noticeable, lacked any punch whatsoever. I looked closer at the similarities and the differences and this is what I found.

In terms of the absurd, there is nothing really dynamic about the TARGET ad’s composition, except perhaps the red accents. I’m sorry, a red notebook and a soul patch are not going to make the cut. The giraffe however, being impossibly placed through the sunroof of a small car, seems contemplative and, well… just perfect. Especially with the same orange color accented in the helm of the autobike rider, who apparently has no concern for the animal’s presence. This is actually not absurd but pleasantly surreal.

I also noted that the perspective of the TARGET ad was too accurate, as if it had been merely traced or filtered, not really “drawn” at all. In contrast, the illustration from The Drama has a distorted perspective and composes the elements a little more asymmetrically.

Furthermore, I could see right away, even before my mind recognized it, that the artists handled their “hand drawn” look differently. It’s subtle but crucial, the execution of the line-work in The Drama illustration is better. Whether in pen or pencil or stylus-tablet, the drawing itself has a looser quality with the use of stipple and variation. Again, the TARGET illustration looks kind of interesting but still has a filtered, photoshop look.

There is a lot that goes into making a good drawing, especially with the right look. TARGET missed the mark.

I don’t want to rant too much, but some artists get it right by doing things a little bit “wrong.”