David Hughes

One of Hughes' many published illustrations,
this one depicting author William Shakespeare.

David Hughes is, I think, a brilliant yet somewhat unusual, perhaps "eccentric" illustrator. His work is somewhat "frightening" at times with his use of quite dark imagery (skulls, obscene nudity etc) but nevertheless always eye-catching and extremely interesting.

Stockport's own Hughes, who during his lengthy and successful career has worked both freelance and for major organisations (like Granada for example) received acclaim for his work for "Othello" which resulted in winning the D&AD Silver Award in 1999, has had his work exhibited at the Royal College of Art and has also won a Pentagram Award.

I just love Hughes' work. Although, as I said, at times it can be quite dark and "adult", I admire the way he uses rough tone in his pieces and am really drawn to the way he draws/describes his characters. For example, taking into account the Shakespeare piece in this post, it clearly is William Shakespeare yet it has not been drawn extremely well. David captures his subjects without the need for realism and time consuming attention to detail.

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