Art
Illustration
#animals
#drawing
#Martin Jarrie
#painting
#surreal
![drawings of hybrid chracters including elephants with blue fish scales and pipe-like trunks, wolves with red crocodile heads for tails, and fish with legs](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-2.jpg)
“Bestioles.” All pictures © Martin Jarrie, shared with permission
Elephants with blue scales and pipe-like trunks, a girl sporting an infinite bouffant full of birds, and a farmer greedy a tree with roots evocative of veins or intestines are just some of the otherworldly characters that populate Martin Jarrie’s illustrations.
The French artist is drawn to mutations and curious situations, skewing bodily proportions or melding two creatures into unusual hybrids. “What pursuits me most is giving beginning to imaginary beings, animals or people, beneath my pencil or my brush,” he shares. “I used to be very marked in my adolescence and youth by the invention of surrealism, from Giorgio de Chirico to Magritte by way of Marcel Duchamp.”
Whether or not engaged on a fee or a private challenge, Jarrie begins with a minimal sketch earlier than selecting a substrate—paper, canvas, or typically picket produce crates—for his acrylic works. “I by no means paint on a white background, however it’s at all times already smeared with paint (remnants of palette, bottoms of tubes, and so forth…),” he notes, which can be evident within the streaks and blotches lining the sides of his works.
![a man with a large white cowboy hat, red checkered shirt, and tall gray pants grasps a tree with a green canopy and tangling roots. flowers and plants surround him](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-6.jpg)
“Horticulteur”
However typically an preliminary drawing doesn’t translate to a bigger illustration. Jarrie has amassed a group of sketchbooks from the previous three many years, which he references when he wants inspiration. He explains:
There are a variety of failures, unfinished drawings… After I get caught, I seek the advice of them and typically discover options in drawings that I discovered unsatisfactory however which out of the blue open up new avenues for me. After which at all times in case of blockage… I leaf by means of the books in my library, artwork books, exhibition catalogs, books on nature, animals, sky charts, previous sea charts, and so forth…
The ensuing works are full of sudden oddities and textured particulars, which the artist describes as direct translations of an thought or thought into “a sensation…The pleasure of drawing is to let your self be stunned,” he says. “One thing escapes.”
Jarrie’s most up-to-date commissions embrace a seasonal label design for Staple Gin, together with a e book challenge for Vista Alegre. Discover far more of his work on Instagram.
![a portrait of a woman with a large bouffant filled with birds](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-3.jpg)
“Tête +oiseaux”
![a drawing of a human hand in navy with thin white lines covering it](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-4.jpg)
“Fundamental”
![a silhouette of a face in blue with dark hair on a red backdrop. small gears, bolts, and other tools dot the body](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-5-scaled.jpg)
“Les 2 géants”
![a woman with curly black hair, a red shirt, and a yellow and black striped skirt is surrounded by dozens of dogs](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-7.jpg)
“Femme aux chiens”
![a man with a long red beak nose, blue shirt, and red and black checkered pants sits on an oversized red wood chair while a white bird with long red beak perches in his palm](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-8-scaled.jpg)
“Nid”
![a green fennel bulb](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/jarrie-1-scaled.jpg)
“Fenouil”
#animals
#drawing
#Martin Jarrie
#painting
#surreal
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