Mark Fredrickson and Silja Gotz

Fredrickson and Gotz have very distinct, yet different styles of artwork. Fredrickson specializes in creating charicatures of famous people, in a hyper-realistic, yet over the top manner. Most of his work has people with extremely large heads, with tiny bodies in comparison. His colors are also realistic, and he seems to specialize in dramatic lighting on the characters. His work also has a somewhat gruesome quality, as the people portrayed are not really portrayed in a very flattering way. He uses a large amount of detail in his work, not through lines, but through his shadowing technique to bring about this hyper-realistic quality. This is not just in his people, though. His backgrounds have the same amount of extreme detail in them that his people do, which helps emphasize the characters. All of his work is done entirely in photoshop, but it has somewhat of a painterly feel to it. In contrast, Gotz’s work focuses on elegant linework and use of flat color. The people in Gotz’s work have more realistic proportions, but the overall effect of them is not realistic, but instead beautifully characterized in simple lines. Her colors are usually limited and have a low saturation. There is also a reliance on the original white of the paper, and not everything is colored in. Gotz also has a lot of detail in her work, but in an entirely different way than Fredrickson. Her detail is in her linework, as she uses many thin lines to give detail to hair and feathers. Although she does also use photoshop, she also uses a combination of cut paper, ink, and pencil to create her works. Gotz’s work, to me, has a very elegant and simple feel to it, which I enjoy much more that Fredrickson’s over the top work, which is more gritty.