5 Mins, Illustration 6 years ago

Say bonjour! To Thomas Danthony

French born Thomas is an illustrator who lives in Barcelona, is inspired by architecture and loves movies. Additionally, has an incredible moustache.

Painting so elegantly isn’t easy. Even if you do nail the technique, the narrative is a whole other ball game. And THAT is why someone like Thomas Danthony commands huge respect.

Born in France and now based in Barcelona (could be worse). Thomas Danthony describes his work as ‘Simple, poetic, subtle and timeless’ and to be fair, we agree.

We love that the fact that paint and paper play a big part of the process. We asked him a little more about that.

Can you tell us a bit more about your production techniques?

I make two kind of images, digital and paintings.

For the paintings, when I developed my technique my goal was to get the same feel I was getting with digital. So I worked in this direction making it look very sharp.

It’s a lot of time and planning, combined with a wide range of techniques from taping to stencil and brush work. Most of the time I already have a pretty clear idea of how it’s gonna look like before starting, then it’s just a matter of executing it.

It feels great to be able to work with real paint and paper but it’s not forgiving at all, and it happen’s frequently that I have to restart from scratch mid way through a painting.

Thomas Danthony Painting Illustration Thomas Danthony Painting Illustration

Do you just work by hand or do you involve software as well? 

Except for the thumbnail phase. I mainly work on the computer with photoshop.

I follow more or less the same process for painting, the computer phase being just to make a plan for the gouache work.

How do you get your inspiration? 

I draw inspiration from everywhere, it’s pretty classic, photography, cinema, painting…

But also from everyday life situation it could be a specific light, a long shadow or piece of architecture that I will remember when creating a specific picture.

Thomas Danthony Painting Illustration

How long have you been working with painting and illustration? 

I have been doing illustration professionally for the last 6 years.

If you could try developing a new style what would it be and why?

I don’t think I would try to develop a new style, it’s not really something you choose. 

It came naturally and is still evolving slowly everyday. It’s linked to my personality and taste so it would always end up looking similar.

Though trying new medium is often a good way to bring a fresh input to a body of work.

Thomas Danthony Painting Illustration


We urge you to watch this beautiful film produced with Handsome Frank (the best illustration agency name in our opinion) all about Thomas.

Enjoy.

 

 

Thanks!

Check out more of Thomas's work on Handsome Frank.

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I'm co-founder of Crazy Animal Face, host of the CAF Podcast, and compere of our CAF events. My views are my own.

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