If you are familiar with the world of visual arts, mentioning „painterly pop culture portraits“ would immediately bring Sam Gilbey’s work to mind. With clients like Disney, Marvel, Sony, and Universal, Gilbey’s unique and hyper-realistic style has led to success in his nearly two-decade-long career. His illustrations have been featured in billboards, comics, books, magazines, licensed prints, exhibitions, movie packaging, TV, and film.
Before delving into what the future holds, let’s learn more about the man behind the artwork and how he landed these incredible clients and projects. Gilbey has been drawing since he was a child, with a background in Fine Art before transitioning to illustration. Starting as a website and graphic designer, Gilbey gradually shifted to illustration full-time around nine years ago.
One of his early jobs involved creating magazine tutorials for painting in software like Photoshop and Painter, which helped him understand techniques better and develop his skills. Gilbey cites Thomas William Chantrell’s Star Wars poster as a major influence on his love for pop culture illustration, along with artists like John Romita Sr and influences from art history and animé.
Gilbey acknowledges the importance of freelancing diversification after experiencing setbacks early in his career. He emphasizes the significance of having clients and projects in various creative areas to ensure stability. Looking to the future, Gilbey finds inspiration from his Instagram followers and the artists he has connected with through social media. When Gilbey began exploring his artistic style, he gravitated towards Corel Painter due to his background in traditional painting and Fine Art qualifications. While he initially worked digitally in Corel Painter, he now primarily uses Photoshop and occasionally Procreate on the iPad. Influenced by classic movie poster art from the 1980s, Marvel comics, and artists like David Hockney, Gilbey describes his creative evolution as akin to starting a band – beginning with covers of favorite artists and eventually developing a unique style that reflects his influences.
Gilbey emphasizes that artistic growth is a continuous process, with influences always shaping and evolving your work. He often incorporates parodies and homages to different styles in his art, maintaining a recognizable yet diverse portfolio. Despite the challenges that come with each project, such as meeting deadlines or aligning with clients‘ visions, Gilbey values the collaborative process and enjoys finding ways to enhance his work based on feedback.
As a freelancer, Gilbey faces the common challenge of managing multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously. He finds that working on different tasks concurrently allows for better focus and fresh perspectives, leading to more productive work sessions. To stay motivated, Gilbey recommends saving progress snapshots to reflect on how far you’ve come when feeling overwhelmed by a project’s scope. „It’s incredible how that can really give you the extra motivation to maintain the pressure and continue making improvements until you’re completely satisfied with it.“
If you look at his portfolio, it’s clear that Gilbey has a passion for film. Some of his favorite projects have involved creating covers for physical media, particularly for reissues of classics like True Romance or The Karate Kid Trilogy. „In my teens, I was obsessed with kung-fu movies, so being able to create new cover art for films starring Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Jet Li, and others has been a real highlight,“ he explains.
One of his career highlights was creating a steel book for Spider-Man: Far From Home, working with Sony Pictures and Marvel through Poster Posse, the pop art collective/agency he’s a part of. „The eight-year-old me will never get over it.“
In 2023, Gilbey had two significant projects with UK billboard campaigns for the BBC and Channel 4, one for their Glastonbury coverage on the iPlayer and the other for a rebrand. He recalls the period fondly, despite the intensity of taking on both dream projects back-to-back.
While he’s usually too busy for personal projects, Gilbey has plenty of ideas he’s eager to work on. He emphasizes the importance of personal projects in developing and refining your unique style and voice, which can ultimately attract clients looking for something similar to what they see in your portfolio.
One of Gilbey’s early freelance moments that stands out is when he interviewed filmmaker Edgar Wright for Pixelsurgeon. Afterward, he sent his agent a fan art piece he had created for Shaun of the Dead as a thank you gesture, hoping it would be appreciated.