Edgar Allan Slothman

Edgar Allan Slothman (Don Carter), illustrator, artist, creative director. Reinterpreter of Audubon’s Birds of America. Prints and commissions for designers, collectors and licensors.

Audubon’s great body of work was a natural portrait of a young nation. He sold his prints by subscription travelling across the country and the Atlantic. His sketches and watercolour studies were painstakingly reproduced by engravers on copper plates, and then the pulled prints were hand-coloured by an assembly line of talented colourists. A name synonymous with protecting the environment, Audubon ironically killed thousands of birds in the process of collecting specimens to wire down onto apertures and be drawn “from life.”

“My objective is to reinterpret this rich history for the digital age. Each bird form has its own set of unique bezier curves—coming together in a multitude of ways to create an almost infinite number of unique species. Add to that the broadest colour palette in the animal kingdom and the design possibilities are multiplied thousand fold. Few people know that an early system to describe the diversity of bird colouration led to the widely used Pantone system today. And that system is used in the Adobe Illustrator program used to create my prints. There are so many connections to art and science in this concept, and it was just a natural progression for me as an artist who has been drawing birds for as long as I could hold a pencil... to my career as a graphic designer utilizing the latest in digital design tools.”

The illustrator of seven picture books for children, Don has also created two Disney animated short-form series, Happy Monster Band and Dance-A-Lot-Robot.

CONTACT

Portfolio: https://slothman.cargo.site/
Instagram: @doncarterart