This paper will expand on insights unearthed during a practice-led PhD recently undertaken by the author at University of the Arts, London. The research project is investigating illustrated skateboard deck artwork in order to identify the distinct visual aura the skateboarder conjures within popular culture. Skateboard deck artwork is a kind of illustrated vernacular, principally developed in California during the 1970s and 1980s, to market skateboard products. The imagery is distinguished by thematic concerns aimed at young adult skateboarders. A practice-led investigation will reveal the origins and function of this persistent illustrated language. This approach will rely upon the author’s prior experience as a professional illustrator and arts educator to illuminate the significance of visual aesthetics, thereby offering a new lens to survey skateboard’s resilient visual culture.

CONFIA 2023 - 10th International Conference on Illustration and Animation

'Don’t Push Me Around': An Enquiry into the Origins, Function and Continuing Impact of Illustrated Graphics within 1980’s Skateboard Culture

The accident has long been acknowledgedas a catalyst fororiginal thought and can offer new insights to the practitioner wishing to develop thingswhich have never been contemplated or seen before. If we accept Virilio’s (2007) description of the accident as “profane miracle”, how can we instigate such mishaps, or even recognise their potential in the increasingly homogeneous digital landscape in which Illustrators find themselves?Is it even possible to override the restrictive mental parameters we are preconditioned to accept?This paper will aim to locate ways in which students of illustration can thrive by instigating accidents or disrupting the inhibitive characteristics of the technologies that surround us. I intend to seek out contemporary illustrators and investigate how they jump starttheir own creative process in order to develop a repertoire of strategies that reveal, or disclose,ways in which eurekamoments can occur. It will investigate whether the D.I.Y mind-set (forever associated with punkattitudes and tastes) that encouraged experiments, riskand feedback, is still relevant to current illustration practices. It will point towards ways in which art educators can incite innovativevisual thinking and nurture image makersthat stand in opposition to algorithmical mediocrity; Illustrators match-fit for the 21stCentury.

ICON10: The Illustration Conference

"Kick Out the jams”: Creative strategies to kick start the illustrator’s imagination

This paper was motivated by an enthusiasm and curiosity to investigate the origins of the illustrated visual language associated with skateboarding. The conspicuous displays articulated the adrenalin thrills of the act itself and disseminated a potent visual code to juvenile consumers eager to establish their rebellious, anti-social credentials. This paper sought out the rich visual iconography associated with Californian youth movements (brought to light by Woolfe in his essay The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965) and attempted to establish a clear lineage between the legacy of Hot-rod customisation practices and the graphic heritage of skateboard culture best characterised by popular skateboard brands such as Powell-Peralta and Santa Cruz, which established the resilient visual inheritance that would eventually transform the perception of these counter cultural attitudes and motifs.

CONFIA 2017: International Conference on Illustration and Animation

Hot rats! How the illustrated vocabulary of Californian Kustom Kulture informed the subversive and irreverent identity forever associated with skateboard fashion and tastes

The Queen of Spades Project is an experimental collaborative project by Joel Lardner and Paul Roberts, Illustration at Arts University Bournemouth. The project explores Alexander Pushkin’s supernatural tale of obsession and risk, The Queen of Spades (1834), and expands on the visual language of Joel Lardner’s 2011 illustrated picture book of the same name. The picture book has always appealed to Illustrators in that it encourages the expansion of a particular visual language and provides a platform with which to build, explore, and examine imaginary worlds.

The research imperative throughout the project has been to harness emerging games technology in order to transform how storytelling and picture books can be understood and reinterpreted. VR technology provides the potential for readers to inhabit a story and offers multi-dimensional insights from within a text. The ability to alternate between characters or intervene at points within the plot opens up new insights as to how stories will be enacted and experienced. Illustrators are uniquely placed to adopt and occupy this new fascinating and portentous field of study -
whether as games makers, or interactive storytellers. An animated experimental film completed in 2016 forms part of an ongoing project exploring the potential for storytelling and illustration within the digital environment. 

This film was awarded certificate of Merit in the category of Animation in the 2016 Three x Three International Illustration Awards, USA. It was also selected for screening during the Motion Commotion event on July 11 2018 at ICON 10 International Illustration Conference in Detroit, USA.

The Queen of Spades

This paper addresses the contemporary and simultaneous rise of glitch art alongside the contemporary turn to craft within the illustrative field. Starting from an analysis of Menkman's 2011 The Glitch Moment(um), it seeks to understand the use of glitches and errors within the illustrators visual vocabulary, through aesthetic and symbolic interpretation of the glitch moment. Drawing upon the concept of the 'glitch-like' as a frequent description of the illustrator's relationship to the error, it argues that the professional illustrator is frequently constrained in their use of pure glitches within their working process due to a number of factors; and instead utilises the error initially through experimental appropriation, and then through normalisation and finally incorporation into the toolbox of the artist. However the paper also recognises the increasing prevalence and (literal) encoding of glitch-like readymades within modern software and associated artistic tools.

The paper proposes that the digital glitch in contemporary illustration exists as an attempt to encode and render the materiality of the digital process and digital product visible, in much the same way that the rise of traditional craft and imperfection in other areas of illustration practice seek to make visible evidence of the artist's hand and the materiality of working processes. The paper seeks to address the inherent contradiction that exists between the notion of craftsmanship and error, and suggests that disruption of the flow of work offers a valuable intervention that enables us to evaluate and re-interpret practices, both as maker, and reader of visual texts.

Joel Lardner

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