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Now a rising illustration star on the West Coast, Pilar still likes disco music, plus heavy metal, monster truck rallies, all things David Hasselhoff and lately, Care Bears. Pilar's ironic embrace of the ridiculous and the extreme, in combination with her sharp technical and artistic skills create a highly energetic, beautifully detailed illustration style that is simultaneously edgy, cute and sexy. Pilar Erika Johnson's work enlivens concert posters, greeting cards, toys, stickers, and advertising campaigns for clients like Bill Graham Presents, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, the California Department of Health and chickclick.com.
My Mom was an artist as well so in addition to toys I was surrounded by prints and paintings. She really liked letterforms and a lot of her paintings were based on groovy-looking 70's letters. Our long hallway was lined with twenty silk-screens of this 70's-style letter 'a' in different colors. Her art was graphical and designed in a way that was really edgy for the time."
"Yup. I have my signature style, the style I've been working in for several years. It's colorful, cartoon-like and cute but can be a little dark, too. That style is big with my kid- and-teen-related clients. About a year and a half ago I had to create something more realistic-looking for a direct mail campaign. The client wanted me to create a series of goddess portraits. To do that I came up with the other style you see on my site. It's very realistic and detailed but also completely fantastical. The great thing is, the campaign has been amazingly successful- the response rate was double the average for direct mail- so I've been creating an illustration a month for them for eighteen months now and it's still going strong. Just like my signature work, that work is created using Adobe Illustrator, but its more complex and I use many more tools and effects. The new style with all its details got me pretty savvy with my Wacom tablet and it brought me back to my roots of being a life drawing major in art school." Where did you go to school? "I was at Hunter College in Manhattan, and my emphasis was life drawing but I also took print making, photography, ceramics, film- all kinds of different ways to make art. I did a bunch of drawings of skeletons and studies from Grey's Anatomy. Since I was in New York my school had great internships with huge companies like NBC and MTV. My first job was working with kids at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an art teacher. It was a great experience to work in a place like that- to be able to walk around the Egyptian wing on my lunch breaks. I was an art teacher for ten years and then I started doing web design. I've been working as an illustrator and graphic designer in San Francisco for the last eight years."
How do you think working as a designer plays into your illustration work? "I understand what designers and art directors need from an illustrator, and how my piece of art is going to fit into something bigger like a website, or a package design. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist; I like my art to look very clean. I think that attention to detail goes hand in hand with being a designer. I'm often zoomed in at 6400% to get things to look tight. I learned how to use all the software apps as a designer, and then began transitioning more and more into illustration. I always made art, but I used to work in more traditional media, like colored pencils and watercolors." Do you prefer to work digitally? "Most of the time I really like it, because of the edit-ability and detail. I used to work with colored pencils and was always a bit frustrated that I couldn't get things quite as clean and tight as I wanted. And if you put the wrong color down, it's hard to undo. When you work digitally, you can zoom in so close it's like another world in there. I think I've developed a different relationship to my digital work versus my pencil rendering, because I can zoom in so close. I become more intimate with the work. But on the flip side, my hands don't get messy which takes away part of the fun."
"I usually start by sketching the basic composition, and use a lot of photos for reference. I am also trying to use my sketchbook more, to doodle just for fun." What's next for you? "Lots. I'm pretty busy. Right now I'm looking for an artists' rep to help broaden my reach. And I'm always looking for more poster, editorial & advertising work. In 2006 I'll be launching my brand called PUFFY P, which is a style and set of characters aimed at teenage girls and tweens. The initial focus is to put the art on products. I'll be doing some self-manufacturing of paper products and I'm also looking for licensing opportunities for other products like apparel. I'm pretty excited about it. And of course, exploring more with my work- I'm looking forward to releasing some of the characters fighting to get out of my head!" - Contributed by Jeffrey Fuchs >> See more work from Pilar Erika Johnson>> See other member spotlights on the member spotlight index >> Find out more on how to become an altpick.com member |
