Inspired By Pin-Up Girls

Design inspiration should come from all kinds of sources. Pin-up artwork gives you great curves, lines and shapes, perspective and bold use of color. I love the old 40s and 50s style of pin-up artwork, but there are also great modern examples as well. It’s another medium of inspiration that takes us away from thinking about web design and just thinking about what looks good in general.

NB: Some of the links in this post feature examples of nude art that may not be safe for work.

Gil Elvgren

My favorite pin-up artist, with a forty year catalogue of work. Pick up ‘The Complete Pin Ups‘ for a comprehensive overview of his more than five hundred paintings. I often look through the book for inspiration, particularly looking at the smooth bold lines he uses.

gilelvgren.com

Greg Hildebrandt

With his brother Tim, Greg Hildebrandt is probably better known for fantasy and sci-fi art, and Magic cards. His pin-up work is exceptional though, and you can see the comic and fantasy roots with the strong use of color and slightly cartoony style.

Greg’s pin-up work at brothershildebrandt.com

Alberto Vargas

If you’ve ever seen pictures of the pin-up girls on American warplanes of World War II, you’ve probably seen an example of Vargas’ work. He worked for nearly sixty years, and his work featured regularly in Esquire and Playboy magazines. In addition to the great lines and subtler style, I love how his lengthy career lets you see more than half a century of changing styles and approaches to pin-up work.

Alberto Vargas gallery at San Francisco Art Exchange

Hajime Sorayama

Sorayama takes a more modern approach to pin-up art. His wider library of sci-fi art is clearly heavily inspired by traditional pin-up art, and it’s great to see how he’s taken that inspiration and moved in a different direction and taken a futuristic slant.

hajimesorayama.com

Imam Woods

One of the aspects I love about the Gil Elvgren book I mention above is how it features examples of the original photography he worked from. Imam Woods takes that further, creating pin-up portraits directly from photographic art. She uses modern technology and fuses photography with painting on canvas to turn the photographs into great examples of the pin-up genre.

imanwoods.com