Illostribute - Albert Dorne

As I've probably said on this blog before, I love Illostribute. This month's subject was Albert Dorne. An incredible (and incredibly prolific) illustrator working mostly in the '40s and '50s. This was a great subject for me as it's a style almost completely different to my own. Previous subjects have been an influence on my work (especially Hirschfeld and Mary Blair) so it felt harder to make my mark whereas Dorne's work, despite the fact that I love it, has only ever been an influence in the sense that he made me want to be a better illustrator.

The process for this one was a bit more convoluted. I only had a day spare to do the entire thing so I spent the morning sketching the individual characters over and over again until I could make them my own. Once I had drawings I liked I scanned them into Photoshop and recreated the composition on screen and then printed the entire thing out ready to lightbox (image below). I think you can still see the sellotape that I used to stick the two pages together (very high tech!). The finished result is at the top of the page along with Dorne's wonderful original. Have a look at the Illostribute blog to see some incredible reinterpretations including (the consistently brilliant) Steffi Schütze's take on the same illustration. Roll on the next one and long live Illostribute!