Jamie Hewlett Exhibition: The Suggestionists

I went to see Jamie Hewlett's new exhibition, The Suggestionists at the Saatchi Gallery in London today. Hewlett is an artist I've known and admired for years, but this was actually his first exhibition ever, and the work was very different from the work he's known for - more personal projects.

This is a piece from the Tarot part of Hewlett's exhibition - each A1 piece accompanied by a poem to describe the tarot card. I love the line quality and use of colour in all of these pieces, which are the most similar in visual signature to Hewlett's more well-known works. I was immediately drawn to these pieces because of this.

I'm always surprised by how large pieces are when I go to exhibitions - seeing Hewlett's work - which is quite similar to my own tone of voice - encourages me to think I need to start working bigger! I can be a perfectionist and want to get lines and marks just right, and since I usually work quite small, this can be difficult. Hewlett's able to use more expressive strokes which look much more refined when the image is resized for viewing online or in print. Since I aspire to create comics, I'm aware that comic artists don't actually work at the size of paper the comic will be printed in, since it's actually much easier to work at a larger scale and have any imperfections disappear or become unnoticeable once they're resized.

Having learned this from researching comic artists' processes, I have in the past tried to do this but find it hard to know where to fit panels or what size they should be in order to look good when shrunk down - which is something I plan to work on over the course of my degree. But first - just working bigger in general, to loosen up my drawing style.

These images are from the next part of Hewlett's exhibition. They're studies of pine trees in the south of France, but again, they are A1 studies that look really detail and refined from afar, but are actually pretty expressive when you look at the detail (see third image).

I NEED TO WORK BIGGER!

 The final part of the exhibition - a fictional adult film star played by Hewlett's wife. A series of poster depicting fictional adult films. These are vastly different from the Jamie Hewlett work we know and love, and although I wasn't as attracted by these posters at first, they do have a fantastic vintage aesthetic and graphic design element. The poses and lighting are well considered and the typography is thought about and fits well with the theme, but is still clear and bold. The colours contrast to catch the eye, warm tones and blue tones, and the posters are simple with block colour backgrounds on most, but effective for what they are. I definitely could believe these were for real films.

Finally...

I met the man himself! Not relevant really, but still something I'm pleased about! Note to self: try to go to press views more often, even if it's accidental and the gallery neglects to mention that 'opens on the 18th' actually means 'open to the press only'. I had a nice, brief chat with Jamie and mentioned being influenced by his drawing to do larger studies, which he also encouraged. So I will get on that.