Marc Martin is an award-winning illustrator, artist and book maker based in Melbourne, Australia. Most of Martins work is with watercolor, gouache and pencil. His work is a world of vivid color, rich textures and “occasional scribble.” Martin is also the author/illustrator of A Forest, LOTS and A River. Having trained and worked as a graphic designer, his moonlighting as an illustrator eventually led him to a successful freelance career.  I learned that Marc draws/finds inspiration from his surroundings, nature, animals, and the city he lives in.

At the museum Marcs illustration caught my attention. The piece is from the book series called, ‘LOTS’. It’s an incredible picturebook, that takes you on a guided journey around the world. The first moment I looked at it, instantly it reminded me of our first project we did in class with the collage of our illustrations. It reminded me about the use of ink and water color we used to finalize of the process.

As I researched about Marc I found a blog post about his process when creating his book. He first brainstormed which places he was going to draw by making a list. Finally he then narrowed it to 14 places and made sure that he had at least one location from each continent. He then talks about the material he used for his work, which was watercolor, pencil and gouache to add different vibrancy on each other pages as well to “reflect the colors and energy of each location.” He then goes in depth about this project how it was like a travel diary and part fact. He wanted to make a book that captured all the unique things you can find in various places around the world. For this book, he used a combination of watercolor, pencil and gouache to achieve a feeling of immediacy and vibrancy on each page, reflecting the colors and energy of each location.

Altogether, it really made me analyze and reflect about how that’s the same exact process we took in class to achieve our final illustration. It’s not about your first thoughts, it’s about brainstorming with many different thoughts and then narrowing it down to a smaller number. With Project 2 I’ll defeinlty keep this in mind and for all future projects hands down.

LOTS: A Book About Everything, For Everyone

Source: http://blog.picturebookmakers.com/post/157523453476/marc-martin

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