Bill Rebholz’s lengthy illustrations full of shapely narratives

Date
1 March 2017

American illustrator Bill Rebholz creates long form illustrations which allow you to scroll through a shapely and layered narrative. By day, Bill designs greeting cards in New York where he currently resides. At night he concentrates on freelance illustration jobs, like a superhero with immense drawing capabilities.

Before moving to New York Bill worked as a journeyman sign painter for a local outfit in Minneapolis. “Working in painting signs was a manifestation of my curiosity in public and pedestrian level imagery and adding back into the visual cacophony that interjects our everyday life,” says Bill. The illustrator now uses this experience within his approach to illustration. “Like drafting letters and painting signage, my illustrations play on simplicity and conveying character through a vernacular of basic forms and objects, often depicting chaotic scenes and adding lettered tidbits into them.”

Bill’s illustrational method is all consuming. “I’m always looking at stuff and consuming information, jotting notes down about things I see, hear or think into my phone-notepad to revisit later,” he tells It’s Nice That. “Pairing those ideas with compulsive free association doodling, the subject matter of my works ends up a combination of observation and random imagination.”

This series, Places, was created during Bill’s move from Minneapolis to New York but is more a comment on the “sameness of general characters and routines in life,” the illustrator explains. “Every city has a corner store clerk with a gold chain and a laser-precision trimmed beard, pool sharks, the lady at work with the bob haircut, pizza lovers, and the guy who believes in aliens just trying to get his bag of vegetables back home (that one might be me).”

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Bill Rebholz

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Bill Rebholz

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Bill Rebholz

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Bill Rebholz

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Bill Rebholz

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About the Author

Lucy Bourton

Lucy (she/her) is the senior editor at Insights, a research-driven department with It's Nice That. Get in contact with her for potential Insights collaborations or to discuss Insights' fortnightly column, POV. Lucy has been a part of the team at It's Nice That since 2016, first joining as a staff writer after graduating from Chelsea College of Art with a degree in Graphic Design Communication.

lb@itsnicethat.com

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