Steffi Schütze, Happy Meat (aka Cecelie Ellefsen), Kirsten Ulve, and Gordon Laite

I simply must sing the praises of Steffi Schütze once again (who I've had the great pleasure of finally meeting in the meantime; here's my previous post about her). She's begun doing a fashion series in her wonderful vector technique that I just love! Here are a few of my favorites from her more recent work...



I met Cecelie Ellefsen (aka Happy Meat) several years ago at one of those wonderful Pictoplasma Conferences. Her work is delightful and subtly terrifying (in a charming and disarming sort of way). If you have not heard of her before then I suggest you trot right on over to her her website and her Esty shop posthaste!



And I am a long-time fan of the very wonderful Kirsten Ulve. Her vector illustrations bowl me over again and again. Here's a small collection of a few of my favorites from along the way...



Oddly enough, when I first discovered her work a number of years ago, it reminded me of illustrations from a favorite Big Golden Book of fairy tales from my childhood. The styles are very different really, but something about the coloring, mood, and layering of some of Kirsten Ulve's work made me think back on that book of fairy tales, and made me wonder if she had perhaps been influenced by it in some way. ...These, for example:



I emailed her at the time wondering about this, and was very pleased to actually get a reply. She was not familiar with the book, she said, but thanked me for introducing her to this particular illustrator's beautiful work. The Big Golden Book in question had copyrights for 1959, 1960, 1962, was called FIVE FAIRY TALES, and was illustrated exquisitely and stylishly by a man named Gordon Laite. Here is some of the work from the book that perhaps caused me to think that Ms. Ulve could possibly have been influenced by him (though I don't know if anyone but me will see why I might have thought such a thing)...



I would like to (and intend to) blog in more detail about Mr. Laite at some point in the future, but for now I will simply point the way to two very generous Gordon-Laite-related posts at the Illustration Station blog:

Gordon Laite
pictures from The Blue Book of Fairy Tales - 1959

Gordon Laite
pictures from More Tales To Tremble By - 1968


Cheers, LaLaVox
www.mildredlovesyou.com
[edit: March 28th, 2011]
Because of problems with my current mildredlovesyou.com domain host, I have set my Mildred Loves You site up at an alternate address for for safe-keeping (but am still hoping that my mildredlovesyou.com domain will go back online at some point anyway)...
www.lalavoxbox.com/mildredlovesyou.html