Jamie Hewlett

Jamie Christopher Hewlett is an English comic book artist and designer. He is known for being the co-creator of the comic Tank Girl and co-creator of the virtual band Gorillaz. While studying at Northbrook College, Worthing, Hewlett, Alan Martin and fellow student Philip Bond had created a fanzine called Atomtan. This brought him to the attention of Brett Ewins. After leaving college Hewlett and Martin were invited by Ewins to create material for a new magazine he was setting up with Steve Dillon in 1988. The magazine was called Deadline and featured a mixture of comic strips produced by British creators, and articles on music and culture. Martin and Hewlett created Tank Girl, an anarchic strip about a teenage punk girl who drove a tank and had a mutant kangaroo for a boyfriend. The strip proved instantly popular and quickly became the most talked about part of Deadline. Hewlett's quirky style (he was a fan of Brendan McCarthy) proved popular and he started to work with bands such as Senseless Things and Cud providing covers for record releases; he also contributed artwork sporadically toCommodore User magazine. Gorillaz remains Hewlett's main project for the foreseeable future. When asked if he would return to comics by Jonathan Ross on an edition of Ross's chatshow on 25 November 2005, Hewlett said no, but he had several ideas which he may do one day.

The image above shows one of Hewlett's pieces used by a company for one of their products. It features Hewlett's signature style with the look of the character being much like the ones in the Gorillaz and in his comic books. The image shows a group of characters all doing different things and in different poses. The characters show all different types of people in society. His characters are created by using an outline and then being coloured in afterwards. His art is coloured digitally but in this certain piece it is made to look like it has been coloured in by hand, this is done with the paintbrush style of colouring. The image features only a couple of colours, blue and pink. These colours used together work very well because of the contrast, this also helps to define the characters and make them stand out from the background and it makes sure they aren't lost in the background. The image has a very clean, commercial look to it. This type of image could easily be used on a double page spread in a magazine, this is because of the width/length of the piece being much bigger than the height of the image. The group of people could symbolise and act as a band. You could add a large blue and/or pink title and add a short article in the sky in black lettering, this would make the piece stand out and be bold without taking all of the attention away fro the image.

This next image is much different to the last and is a very bold, powerful image. The image shows a man sitting in a small boat filled with lots items and objects. I really like this image because of the simplicity of the image and the calm feel that it has. The boat is floating in the middle of the sea with nothing but a very faint sight in the distance. The boat is facing the audience and the character is sitting up right looking directly at the viewer. This is done to relate to the audience and to catch their attention. By making the mode of address direct, the image directly appeals to the viewer. The colour of the background is very subtle, this makes the boat stand out more and it helps it jump out of the page slightly. This image is very striking and I really like it. There is so much detail in this piece and even though you can see it is an odd looking character, the image looks realistic. The image could easily be used on a magazine cover, because of the striking characteristics and the layout.

I have chosen to look into the work of Jamie Hewlett because it is such a unique style and he has such an interesting body of work. This research will help me in different ways. Firstly, it gives me another option to look into regarding the style of art that I will feature on my magazine cover. It is good to have different options to experiment and to see which works best and which doesn't work at all. Secondly, it gives me ideas to how I can set out my magazine and it shows me different poses that I could use. This is important as different poses will work better than others and I need to find these out and the only way to find out i to try it myself. This research relates a lot to what I am doing because I am doing a drawing for my magazine cover and it helps me with this process a lot.