Daniel Mackie

"Illustration for Triathlete world.
Panicking in deep water.
Article about a swimmers personal experience with the "swim" part of the triathlon. Her fear of Deep water. As the water got colder she knew it was getting deeper. Her mind started to race with questions like, "what was that that just brushed past my leg"

You can see the influence of Matisse and Japanese prints in this illustration."

I wish i'd done this. I was searching for 'traditional' artists which i could relate to and found Daniel Mackie. He uses watercolours which are my favourite media. The difference is he uses them with devastating effect. The slight variations in tone on the skin is absorbing. He often uses interesting angles, this one is from below the water line looking up towards the swimmer, with perfect perspective and foreshortening on the left hand. He must have chosen this angle to show the audience what was going on below the surface and to push the point of deep water. My eye is drawn to the sole of the foot where fantastic light and dark contrast is complemented by anatomical accuracy and a rarely seen viewpoint. It's not often an artist shows the bottom of a foot, and when they do it can be quite off putting, with wrinkles and overlapping toes. Whereas here it's quite pleasant.
The artist has a gently stylised way of working, with arching backs and bending limbs. To counter balance this, the exremeties and facial features are comparatively realistic and proportional. The solidity of the break of the waves are appropriated directly from traditional Japanese paintings, where the sea has quite definate shapes and curves, whereas traditional British landscape artists would try to paint the sea realistically-including the spray.
The wet or dry suit would have been a handy item of clothing for an artist that likes to show the human figures real shape which none skin tight clothes tend to hide. It allows the artist to fully exagerate the body without worrying about things being unexplained underneath trouser legs or baggy jumpers.The wet suit itself is very much like a Japanese full body tattoo, encompassing waves, sea weed and koi carp. The blue of the suit is the same blue as the water around her, presumably this is a hint towards how at one with the water a swimmer feels. The suit is protecting her from the worst of the cold but she is surrounded by water. The sea doesn't care what you look like or how u dress, it has no mercy.
Interestingly the artist has included the swimmers wedding ring, i wonder if this was a conscious decision or it was drawn simply because it was ther on the hand. He has also chosen to draw the goggles popping off the swimmers head. This could be a reference to her wanting to give up and throw her equipment away, or (more likely) to how she feels when she is in deep water.She is scared and not concentrating on the race. The goggles have popped off when she jerked from something touching her leg as she swam past. She now feels unprepared, out in the open, alone.
It could also work the other way around. That the goggles have some sort of Placebo effect, that when she's wearing them she means business. There's no time for fear when the goggles are on, it's time to race. But when they're off she feels uneasy and loses her confidence.
I think my favourite quality of this painting is how you can still see faint pencil marks beneath the thin watercolours. It is a refreshing change to a trend in covering your tracks in an attempt at perfection.
I think Daniel Mackie's art will have a lot of impact of my way of working.I will stop feeling like watercolours are an old fashioned, childrens book illustration sort of media now i have seen successful and modern artists using them. Mackie has a pleasing blend of traditional and modern ways of working, it makes me happy to look at it. I also way to put more thought into my ideas and viewpoints, which make an image more dynamic, as i tend to stick to flat, side-on angles. I will also stop forcing myself to caricature things and people to such an extreme, as it often looks nicer when there is just a small bit of stylising going on, just enough to bring out a personality or emotion. Facial expressions do need to be exagerated sometimes to help get the point across. I also shouldn't be scared of making things look realistic, i can sometimes feel like i HAVE to stylise an image...otherwise they may as well have had a photo taken. Now i realise it isn't about how life like it is, but what message it gives across, what it feel like.