P5: Research Task - 5.0 - Visual Language

For this exercise we were to explore an illustrator from the list given and discover more about their visual language style. I chose Holly Wales and have written my statement below from the research I discovered and have included my references sources below.

Jealousgallery.com. (2020). Holly Wales Prints | JEALOUS Gallery. [online] Available at: https://www.jealousgallery.com/artists/holly-wales [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Holly Wales. (2020). Holly Wales. [online] Available at: https://www.hollywales.com/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Instagram.com. (2020). Holly Wales (@hollibobs) • Instagram photos and videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/hollibobs/?hl=en [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Communication Arts. 2020. Holly Wales | Communication Arts. [online] Available at: <https://www.commarts.com/fresh/holly-wales> [Accessed 12 May 2020].

Holly Wales. 2020. Holly Wales. [online] Available at: <https://www.hollywales.com/#/southwest-magazine-1/> [Accessed 12 May 2020].



Holly Wales has a really vibrant, interesting style and has worked with many companies and individuals across her career, below are the words I feel communicate the main points about her work.

Keywords:

Place/Travel, Shapes, Story, Experiments, Bright Colour, Lettering, Objects, Fashion.

Statment:

Holly Wales is an Illustrator from the UK. Her work is heavily focused on bold, bright marker pen colours and her style depicts shapes, forms, food and drink, places, 2D work for books and magazines and map illustrations.

Wales, uses typography in some of her work, experimenting with different styles dependant on the brief. Her words are a mixture of descriptive, informative and practical. With an education in Graphic Design her experience in this area shines through in her illustrations of objects, such as labels on bottles, glasses and other products.

It is clear that Wales has perfected her use of marker pens to present a variety of subject matter and in a style that is very bold and bright. Wales also has creative skills in sharing emotional narratives through street scenes and portraits by using limited colour palettes with black and white characters, such as in her work for Southwest magazine.

Wales loves to travel and this is evident in her work both professionally and in her personal sketchbooks of places, maps and exotic drinks. Wales’ drawings communicate a passion for exotic places, seeing the world and expressing it through her vibrant creative lens in her own unique style.

Reflection:

Researching Holly Wales work was really interesting for me. I enjoy marker pens also but am still exploring how to use them well, so it was really educational for me to see all the vast themes Wales has managed to cover with one essential medium. I also find Wales vibrant colours very inspiring as I am very particular on the colours I use in my own work and so this has given me a bit more confidence in that.

Wales' book looks like something that would really benefit me and so I am looking to obtain that in the near future to help me in my own work.