2nd Year - 12: Dave McKean

Dave McKean

Director of Luna, Dave McKean is also an illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, musician and graphic designer. His work is quite surreal and strange which gives him a unique style and opens him up more to a market by almost becoming a main figure of a certain style. 

He was born in Maidenhead, England in 1963 where he grew up with a love of comics. He planned to take his love into a career and took a trip to new york in 1986 to find work as a comic book illustrator, but failed. Shortly afterwards while back in England he met writer Neil Gaiman and the two began writing "Violent Cases",a short graphic novel which became published in 1987.

Among his work with Gaiman, he also began working for DC comics, on covers for "Hellblazer" initially but then moved on to the more successful and popular "Batman", producing the graphic novel "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth", written by Grant Morrison.

McKean has also had success with creating Album Art, and has worked with a range of artists including "Alice Cooper", "Buckethead", and "Fear Factory".

In the illustrated book by Richard Dawkins called "The Magic of Reality" McKean's strange creations were used to explain different aspects of every day life.

As well as creating the illustrations for The Magic of Reality, he also illustrated Coraline, again with Neil Gaiman and worked as a concept artist for the Harry Potter franchise, coming up with the designs for The Dementors. 

While at San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) He was asked about his influences, to which he replied "My influences were nearly anybody, really. You can find something in anything if you look. There have been maybe a couple of people whose attitude in their work was really important. There's a New York artist called Jim Dine who I really love; there's an English illustrator called Ralph Steadman who I like. Every line in a Ralph Steadman drawing is describing and expressing the emotion in the character, not just what they look like." 

By looking at Steadman's work we can see a subtle similarity in that he also works with surrealism and the line is quite similar to the comicbook line McKean uses within his Batman comics, but this subtle similarity is better seen in his earlier work with The Wolves In The Walls.

I feel that the way the line is used for the illustrations of TheWolves in The Walls is very similar to an illustrator called Daniel Egneus. The processes are very similar in that a line creating a figure sits over splashes of colour which amplifies the figure and is used to anchor attention.

The Wolves in the Walls, Dave McKean

Red Riding Hood, Daniel Egneus














References:
http://unbored.net/dave-mckean/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/dave_mckean/biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_McKean

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=46907