A Little Too Similar?

Illustration is an area of design that I have become particularly interested in over recent years, and one of the first illustrators that I really admired was Mr. Bingo, who became famous for his Hair Portraits, depicting people/characters by drawing nothing but their hair. The results are humorous, and I'd never seen anything quite like it before; I loved the way that the hair was drawn in such detail, and that nothing else was needed to recognise the people depicted in the portraits.

'A New Hope' featuring Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo, and Chewbacca from Star Wars.

And 'Thinkers', which features the hair of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and I'm not sure about the last two, but I believe them to be Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

However, since discovering the talents of Mr. Bingo, I've discovered a number of other illustrators who appear to have a very similar style. In some cases, a little too similar. For example, this poster from Christina Christoforou, which is a "tribute to bands and their hair" (for sake of comparison, see Mr. Bingo's Guns 'n' Roses print).

Christina Christoforou

And it seems I'm not the only one to have noticed this; Mr. Bingo himself is keen to point out plagiarisms of his work via his Twitter feed. He recently highlighted the similarities between his own work and that of Toby Triumph. Toby is another illustrator whose work I particularly like, but the comparisons between the two illustrators are inevitable, as they both create detailed line drawings with ever so slightly wobbly/wonky lines which give the work that delightful hand-drawn feel that you don't get from straight lines and smooth curves.

To compare, here's the two side by side:

Mr. Bingo

Toby Triumph

And another, even more undeniable similarity:

Mr. Bingo

Toby Triumph

Now so far it sounds like I'm siding with Mr. Bingo, however, that is only because I personally discovered his work before I found that of Toby Triumph. To be fair to them though, I have no idea who created their work and their style first, or if indeed there is any plagiarism taking place at all, or whether the similarities are simply a rather strange coincidence. But it doesn't stop there, I've stumbled across countless illustrators who produce very similar work, all with the same hand rendered, black line drawing style:

Mr. Bingo

Damien Weighill

Richard Hogg

Andrew Rae

Now if I didn't know better, I would no doubt assume that all four of the above images had been created by the same illustrator. But of course they're not, and I have to admit that when I'm drawing, I often find myself adopting this style of illustration myself.

So why is this style of drawing popular with so many different illustrators? Perhaps it's simply because it looks good, perhaps it's because it's relatively easy to draw this way, or perhaps it's because it's a natural progression from the cartoon style line drawings we all do as children. Personally, I love this style of drawing, but with so many illustrators adopting it, I wonder if it will be long before it starts to lose it's charm, and we see a new illustration trend emerging.