PRACTITIONER RESEARCH - Florian Nicolle: Florian Nicolle is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator who has a graphic design degree. He creates collages using a variety of materials such as coloured ink, pen, markers and watercolour paints. He then scans them into Adobe Photoshop, where he applies textures.
The portraits Nicolle creates are often on top of, or incorporating newspapers and books and he makes use of a muted colour palette, although sometimes adds splashes of colour. The style of his work is very quick and messy but with detail around important areas, such as facial features. Also, he creates an ‘unfinished’ look by not using definitive edges around the outside of the subjects. For example, he’ll leave the top of a head off or half the face un-filled like the pictures above.
“I try to create an image that retains its freshness of the first paint stroke, the expressions of the line have to be very free and spontaneous, while keeping a rigorous drawing. So I use fast techniques. I draw a picture as if I wrote a text, with the same tool, same freedom, erasures, lines, scribbles.”
I really like Florian Nicolle’s style and the way he incorporates text in his work, I like the idea of actually painting on pages from my book. I also love the use of different mediums, especially the dripping of the watercolours and the way he leaves it looking ‘unfinished’. These are both things I’d like to use as inspiration for my own work.
