Sour Bones

Nick Carroll or sour bones as he is better known is a illustrator from Leicester who says he has a simple goal in his illustrations which is to create an illustration that look as good in a book or magazine as they would on a skateboard deck or t shirt, i came across his work in computer arts magazine and was really drawn to his style and so checked out his website.

www.sourbones.com

He has a really clean style to his work that use allot of strong black outlines and are very minimal but have a very strong yet subtle colour scheme often only using 3 or 4 contrasting colours that is very carefully matched with large amounts of white space which is really effective and this is something i can relate to as i enjoy creating simple work and trying to make the most of a small image with placement on a page to make it balance perfectly. in his brief interview in computer arts i noticed something he said and it really made me think about my approach to work, in regards to the cat illustration above he said " the spatter i am particularly proud of as i splashed some ink around and scanned it in to help make it look life like" and while the technique is nothing new or innovative it just made me think more about the attention to detail and how i am sometimes lazy in my work and instead of experimenting with inks and scanning in my own textures i Will just look for a photoshop brush, so in the future i wan to spend more times on the little details just to add that extra personal touch that cant be re created by anyone else to my work.

His particular style is something i personally notice in design, his illustrations remind me of japanese cartoon style but mixed with a urban graffiti look which is something i always associate with kid robot vinyl toys which is a design style that i find always catches my eye amongst others.


While i enjoy a lot of his work there are some that i think can look a little tacky specifically these pieces are the ones where his alias "sour bones" is featured in them as they look more like tags than a piece of thought out design and the wording is always very prominent and take away from what is a interesting illustration and when i see this i really think why have you done that?, and it reminds me that you can add the tiniest thing to a piece of work and it is ruined but personally i like to think that this is something that i can notice when doing work but also can find myself constantly going back to pieces and tweaking bits and making small alterations and this is something that can make the most difference which is not always a good thing.