Friday 4 March 2011

Thanks to Stuart Kolakovic

Many thanks to Stuart Kolakovic for an entertaining and realistic view of his freelance career to date in his visiting lecture on Friday.
Stuart was a graduate of Kingston University and is now based in the Midlands. He has been getting lots of work and exposure recently. So it was good of him to give up his time.
I think it fair to say that Stuart was less than impressed by the standard of art direction these days.
From art directors forgetting to give him the dimensions for a commission, to those whose over directing every single detail leads to a lack of creativity, to those whose only direction was " to make it brighter".

Stuart's work draws on his Serbian heritage and other Eastern European folk art traditions, and is beautifully realised . It was good to hear that his work is still based on drawing and is hand rendered
and scanned before being digitally coloured. His first love was comic book illustration, but he was disenchanted with the possibilities of making any money out of comic illustration.
 I tend to think that his was quite a realistic representation of the quality of commissioning and art direction these days, and a reminder that whilst we concentrate on creativity in university much of the day to day business of filling space with pictures can be quite mundane.
Stuart is represented by Heart illustration agency, who are linked on the right. As is Stuart's website and shop. We will overlook the fact that I didn't get any free badges.

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