The Art Of Des Taylor.

art
12/14/2009

The Trouble with Katie Rogers.


by Hynam Kendall


“My girls are sassy, cool, and desirable,” says fashion illustrator-cum-pop artist Des Taylor in explanation of the mass allure of his street-style comic strip pin-up girls, but we think there’s more to it than that. These beautiful creatures, unlike other ‘cartoons’, bear influence not only from fellow comic book artists such as Bruce Timm, Darwyn Cooke and Jack Kirby, but also true masters of the craft like Toulouse Lautrec and Roy Lichtenstein.

 
Watching his older sister paint as a child, her medium far more traditional than his own comic book aesthetic, a young Des Taylor knew that art was his calling. But he wasn’t interested in the same canvas pieces as his older sibling, drawn to modern pop iconography like Star Wars, Des pursued art via graphic design, graduating in 1994 from West Herts College in Watford. One of his first clients was a pre-Spice Girls Geri Halliwell, Watford’s own pin-up girl with boobs, brass and something of the vixen about her. His buxom femme fatale illustration even made it to the final pages of her eponymous autobiography.

Since then, Taylor’s take on the female form has been employed by clients including Pink, La Perla, Anne Summers, FHM, The V&A museum and myriad fashion houses and jewelers, his most recent creation, Vesha Valentine, featured in celebrity jeweler Theo Fennell’s Christmas window displays in Harrods, Selfridges, Royal Exchange and the Fulham Road flagship store.

Maybe the greatest accolade, though, amidst all the Amazonian slips of women with skin-coloured legs of rope up to jam jar breasts in perfect salmon pink, was the commission of Adrian Grant, publisher of Off The Wall, the official Michael Jackson fan magazine. Taylor, after immortalizing the king of pop in his two-dimensional stenciled style, met Jackson backstage at the Dangerous tour, presenting him with a specially commissioned cartoon. By means of a thank you, and in an expression of respect for Taylor’s work – Jackson was a vocal fan - in June 2002, Taylor presented the star onstage at the Killer Thriller party at Equinox, Leicester Square, London.

Taylor’s latest project is his first graphic novel, the Ape Entertainment-published The Trouble with Katie Rogers, Katie being a somewhat voluptuous though seemingly cotton-mouthed English-born publicist battling her heels against the streets of Manhattan. She is a character 4 years in the making (she had her own Myspace account in 2006, which led to legions of followers and fans), though she wasn’t as, ahem, fleshed out until some recent unprecedented downtime due to a sports-related injury. Taylor assures that this opulent creature, all sass, breasts and voluminous heels, is a direct translation of the many girls he has met on his travels, working for the likes of Company as a freelance illustrator. “I’m influenced by real people,” the artist says, though if such aesthetically pleasing ‘real people’ exist, we’d certainly like to know where!

Des Taylor will be signing his first graphic novel, The Trouble With Katie Rogers, at Maverik Showroom, Redchurch Street, with prints available from Urban Species.
 
www.urbanspecies.co.uk   
   
www.maverikshowroom.com
 
 

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