Illustration Teardowns: Karolis Strautniekas

A homage to Karolis Strautniekas with some thoughts on what makes his illustrations so good.

Illustration Teardowns—illustrated by Rob Levin

In the spirit of UX Teardowns, I’ll be looking at illustrators that catch my eye, and try to analyze what makes their work so compelling. Please note that all illustrations hereinafter, unless stated otherwise, are the express work of the artist I’m reviewing; I do not take any credit for their works! Also, I will try to be careful to post links back to the artist’s site—so if you click their image it will link through.

According to his bio, Karolis Strautniekas works and lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was schooled at The Fine Arts Academy in Vilnius. He’s done work for many huge clients like Adobe, Dropbox, Facebook, Forbes, The New York Times…and the list goes on. Let’s take a look…

Clever concept and execution mixed with subtle use of color and texture are central to a Strautniekas illustration

Observations

Here are some noteworthy characteristics I noticed in the illustration work:

• He seems to love using some form of the hue blue—but, it IS a good color so we forgive :)
• Most of his work cleverly makes extensive use of depth of field contrasted against the focal point (or figure–ground if you’re a Gestalt nut). Sometimes he does this by using a monochromatic and ghosted palette for the background elements, while allowing for a nice amount of details that don’t overly pop and detract from the focal point:

Monochromatic background allow for extra details while letting the focal point “pop”

• Heavy use of silhouette. Especially for his people elements.
• Liberal use of gradients mixed with textures. To the point on using silhouettes, he may overlay the silhouette with a nice gradual highlight (e.g. see the brief case above; the highlight on the flap has a nice gradation from light to dark as it reaches the top)—actually, you can see this use of “texture gradients” throughout the image above.
• Same subtle gradation used for shadows.

There are a trillion ways to play with gradients and textures, but here’s an article covering a few ways to get that Risograph gradient look if you’re interested. Personally, I’ve found that some of the grain and canvas “FX brushes” in the Kyle T Webster’s brushes can be used with gradients, masks, opacity erasers, etc., in creative ways to create similar but different effects as well.

• Not all images are conceptual. Some of his stuff is clever, but, some other works are more compelling because they evoke a mood or feeling.
• And Ben Weeks makes an astute observation in the comments:

“He’s creating a sense of physical space and depth by using layered reflections and transparency.”

I’m sure I’m missing some other magical characteristics of his illustrations, but these are the ones that stood out for me :) If you’re interested, there’s a really good article that delves in to his daily rituals and illustration process.

I’ll generally try to keep these fairly short and to the point, but, what do you think about this guy’s work? Does it move you? Why? Anything you don’t like about it?

Rob Levin is a freelance illustrator. Portfolio: https://roblevin.myportfolio.com/ For illustration work enquiries, collaboration, or to say hi: roblevinillustration@gmail.com.

Also, you may like to read more of the illustration teardowns articles.

Next in series: Marcus Allen Miller.