April 4th - 2022: Alex Vede

Unsurprisingly, I came across the artist I am about to talk about through one of my many interests; books/reading. Yet, what is surprising is where this book was. After having backed the project for my favourite novel author, Brandon Sanderson, on Kickstarter, I had a scroll through what other projects needing backing in the publishing category, and came across a book called the The Last Hacker, by Mark Wahlbeck.

The title of the book was what caught my attention secondly, after having seen the cover for the book. Which now saying this now sounds dumb as book covers do need to be eye catching, otherwise how else will customers/people be able to see or have their attention grabbed by a book, because they cannot see the small text on a book from over the far side of a bookshop, unless they have binoculars of course. Besides, the artwork on the book cover is amazing, and this is what caught my attention, and will probably catch a lot of other peoples attention too.

Alex Vede is a Spanish artist, and oh boy is her work amazing!!!!!

I cannot get over how great this artist's work looks, the careful consideration of lines and mark placement, as well as the choice of colour, tone, texture and shading. THERE ARE EVEN HALFTONES, used very subtly in the artwork to help bring in depth and mood to the scenes she makes overall.

Her style, the rough and somewhat undefined lines give her scenes lived in feel. Portraits I suppose always have their sharp and clean lines, since they are somewhat of a first kind of photograph before the camera was invented, since the image they were making was of a static subject. But with Vede's work, the incomplete lines and strokes adds a feeling of energy and hesitant movement, like motion blur if visible in her images/scenes. I think the use of her inking and half toning adds to this, since both of these processes can be random and unpredictable, adding a sense/extra layer of realism and lived in presence to her artwork.

(BELOW ARE SOME OF MY PERSONAL FAVOURITES OF HERS):

Alex Vede has given me some inspiration for my own artwork, try and see what my own style would look like if I tried to create some designs without making all my lines connect, see if that helps to add anymore depth to my scenes/panels, same again with the half-toning, I shall experiment a little further with the process and see what results that will turn out.