Igor Lukyanov - Graphic Artist | Illustrator

Artist's Video Report No.3

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I have not been posting in the blog for quite a while. The thing is that not all my clients let me show artworks I’ve done for them. I always ask for permission to show the recent artworks and even offer to link to the client’s website from the blog post if he/she gives me permission. However some of my customers ask me to never show the works anywhere, the others ask to wait for a certain period of time till they publish or print illustrations, t-shirt designs etc. Thus the visitors of this blog will never see some wonderful artworks of mine, which is pity, though some others works are coming soon after I get permissions from the clients who asked to postpone showing artworks created for them.

Today I want to show you my third video report with those artworks which I am allowed to show and which were created during April – May 2010. Enjoy!

Drawing a Sketch a Day

Monday, May 3, 2010

I decided to create another blog where I will post a daily sketch or a drawing. I hope I will be able to draw at least a rough sketch a day. I will provide no comments about a sketch or drawing I put on the blog. I hope the visitors will enjoy my artworks however rough they were.

Sometimes I love to draw some sketches or doodles spontaneously, or I create some interesting sketches or drawings during my work on some projects and those sketches are intermediate artworks which were not approved by clients or I just used them to find the best possible style of illustrations and to train my hand for the corresponding style. Those sketches and drawings are too rough for this blog where I try to show only the best works. I think creating another blog dedicated to my sketches is the best way to show some of my raw works and I believe that those who love drawing will enjoy following this blog.

So, please, feel free to visit my sketch a day blog and follow it if you like to.

Portrait of a Weeping African Woman with a Child

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Today I want to show you my portrait of a weeping African woman with a child. I created this portrait for a wonderful African fashion and lifestyle magazine – BHF Magazine. This image was supposed to be a protest against a terrible massacre which had taken place in one of the African countries. It’s really sad to know that there are still countries in the world where women are crying over their murdered husbands and children. I wish God may give wisdom and power to those who can bring peace to all countries of Africa and to all other nations which suffer from violence in their country. I heard a lot of awful stories about what was going on in some African countries like Sierra Leone and others but I still cannot totally wrap my head around how it is to live in constant danger and fear. Fortunately people of Ukraine, the country where I live, have forgotten about the war and can enjoy peace now and I wish the same for all the nations of the globe.

This African woman portrait is particularly interesting because I have used very dense and elaborated cross-hatching here. I used 2H and HB pencils to draw the portrait. The original illustration has the resolution of 3300 x 4374 pixels but I hope this low resolution copy (please, click on the picture below to make the image bigger) will let you enjoy this artwork and hopefully will make you think about how wonderful it would have been if this African woman was crying from happiness only.

African woman portrait

portrait of a weeping African woman with a crying child (drawing by Igor Lukyanov)

Drawing Fashion Illustrations and Sketches

Friday, April 23, 2010

I had started drawing fashion sketches and illustrations not so long time ago when I worked for a graphic design company, that is before my freelance illustrator and artist career began. When I first created a few fashion illustrations my friends said they loved my drawings and advised me to keep on developing my skills in fashion art. After that I had made a few friends related to fashion design industry on Facebook and they told me my fashion sketches and illustrations were pretty good. So I thought that if even people who are professionals in the industry loved how I had drawn fashion illustrations I should go into this kind of illustrations business, at least fashion drawings should be a part of my artist's portfolio.

Having thought this, I created a blog totally dedicated to my fashion sketches and illustrations. When establishing this blog I was planning to attract some fashion designers or fashion and lifestyle magazine editors who might be interested in original custom illustrations for their advertising or other business purposes. You can check out my blog of a fashion illustrator to take a look at some my sketches and illustrations there. Although I do not have a lot of fashion illustrations so far, I keep on working in this direction to perfection my skills in drawing of fashion. My drawing philosophy is to draw realistic fashion figures with minimal or non deviation from the standard human body proportions. From the technical point some of my fashion drawings look like realistic or semi-realistic portraits. I am aware of abstract and non-realistic fashion sketches and illustrations being extremely popular in the contemporary world of fashion design. A lot of fashion designers use drawings of models with extremely long bodies (especially legs). Such sketches seem to be conventional today, therefore my fashion illustrations are out of the mainstream. I love to draw pretty faces for my female fashion illustrations and a kind of attractive feminine bodies because I want my illustrations and even rough “croquis” (sketches) to look like real women for whom, I hope, fashion designers try to create their apparel. Of course, I also pay special attention to drawing clothing details and models poses. I don’t want to tell that my fashion illustrations are better than others, moreover I am sure I must work a lot to improve my drawings and there are a lot of fashion illustrators from whom I can learn a lot and who, if they see my drawings, can severely criticize my art for its realism or other reasons but I am happy when I create something which is close to my favorite realistic drawing style and the majority of fashion people who I know seem to like what I do. So enough with the words here, you can read more on my fashion illustrator's blog and now let’s move on to a few my fashion sketches and illustrations I want to show you in this post.