Michael English

Bio

Michael English (born in Bicester, Oxfordshire, September 5, 1941- died in London September 25, 2009) was a British artist known for poster designs he created in the 1960s with Nigel Waymouth and the design company they established Hapshash and the Coloured Coat and for several series of Hyper Realist paintings in the 1970s and 1980s. His early childhood was spent moving around England with long holidays spent in the South West of Ireland where his mother came from. Throughout his childhood, he developed a fascination with drawing, often technical subjects such as aeroplanes and trains both of which remained a fascination throughout his life.

Here is a piece of Michael English’s work; I have taken this work out of one of his books called 3D eye. This piece is called Angle delight. I have chosen this because it focuses on a main focus of my own which is fruit. In the bottom left corner is a strawberry, in my own work I have been looking at strawberries to work from and create my own

The media that Michael English has used to create this piece has been digitally produced on the computer, the techniques used have been photography of the objects and food in the image, and then he has taken this image and used photoshop to airbrush them. He has used lots of different ways to produce this type of work.

I am mainly focusing on the strawberry in the bottom left of the image as you can see I have zoomed into the image to see more of the qualities.

The colour used is the natural colour of the strawberry, with the basic tonal qualities of light and dark with shadows. By producing this image by taking a photograph and creating an airbrush effect to it, it then makes the image more basic and makes the colours and the whole strawberry easier to see for the viewer.

By airbrushing the fruit Michael English is perfecting the whole fruit to make it look a lot more tasteful, this method is used in a lot of advertising to make the piece of food more appealing and to make the customer want it more.

The texture also plays a key part in this piece of work as, when he adjusts the image he changes the way it looks and the strawberry looks a lot more basic. I also really like the grainy look that Michael English personally puts into his work, as it is a unique way to create this.

Mushroom.