Illustration Adjunct Faculty Neil Swaab was recently interviewed for the Italian version of Rolling Stone magazine. Also, this past December, Neil released an Italian-translation collection of his comic, Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles. Congratulations on both publications, Neil. Viva Italia!
Deroy Peraza, an Illustration alum and faculty member, discussed his business Hyperakt and artistic process with Spraygraphic’s Sprayblog back in January. Here’s an excerpt:
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
DP: There’s two answers to that. The creative process and the pragmatic process. The trick is getting the two to get along.
On the creative side, there are always some vague ideas floating around in my head that are waiting to get matched with the right project. They are usually inspired by something I saw, read or heard somewhere, and tend to be unfinished fragments that don’t really mean anything until they are activated by a concept. But all of that is bullshit without answering some very basic, practical questions first:
1. What does it need to do?
2. Who needs to get it?
3. Why?
Whether the work is personal or commercial, print or interactive, 2d or 3d, the same questions apply. I need to be able to define what I’m trying to do concisely in one statement before creating anything. Otherwise, I feel lost. Like most things in my life, the process of creating any work is one of structured chaos.SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
DP: Ask for help. One of the great things of working in a collaborative environment, with people I like and respect, is that I can ask them for help. Everybody gets stuck sometimes. Whether your brain forgot to power up that day or whether you’ve been working on something for so long that you’ve been blinded to reality, there’s nothing like a little perspective from your peers for a reality check. At Hyperakt, we don’t really have the luxury of letting a project sit around waiting for brilliant ideas, so we tag team on them when we get stuck. We’ll just trade projects and hit reset. Its a practice that is not easy to learn. It requires putting the ego aside, and trusting your baby to someone else. Both are hard. Other than that, there’s the usual. I dig for inspiration in our library or on the web. I go for a walk. I try to travel as much as possible. I’m also very competitive, so nothing fires me up more than seeing good work from the competition.
Read the rest of Deroy’s interview here!
Our fine friends over at Spraygraphic Sprayblog caught up with Parsons Illustration Adjunct Faculty Ray Hooper, who has taught Type in the department for some time and who has branched into the world of greeting cards with his company, Ray Hooper Designs. Here’s an excerpt:
SG: Can you tell us a little about your business, Raymond Hooper Design, LLC.
RH: We design Greeting Cards, Appointment Books, Journals, etc. My company is a year old this month and after a year of building a staff and inventory we had our first sales last month. We are trying to appeal to people who are both sophisticated about art and design and don’t necessarily need someone else to write their sentiments. As a result many of our cards have very terse messages on the inside or none at all. A number of our cards are blank note cards with photographs, illustrations or just some kind of graphic on the front.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
RH: The books in book stores and museums across the country. The cards, so far, only at trade shows and in trade publications.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
RH: Trade shows in Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle. Card stores in North Carolina, Texas, Washington state and upstate New York.
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
RH: No such thing. It’s a joy making my living designing.
SG: What is your favorite color?
RH: I like them all.
Make sure you read the rest of Ray’s interview here and check out his designs here.
Illustration Adjunct Faculty Frank Olinsky is a busy man! He recently created his third logo for media wizard Fred Seibert’s Next New Networks, a new kind of media company, creating micro-television networks over the internet for targeted communities, bringing together elements of TV programming and internet philosophy to allow viewers to contribute, share and distribute content. His latest logo is Goggleburn: Online TV You Gotta See. Previous, more illustrative logos were created for Bleacher Bloggers and Metal Chik: The first online network for jewelry making and trends.
Additionally, our friends over at the Spraygraphic Sprayblog interviewed Frank about his artistic process. Here’s a snippet:
SG: How did you get into being an artist/designer for record companies (CD Cover work) and companies like MTV?
FO: A few early album covers somehow came my way, and after designing the MTV logo, musicians, managers and record companies began contacting my former design studio, Manhattan Design.
SG: What kind of deadlines do you work with when producing this kind of work?
FO: That ranges from a few weeks to months. I’ve even had a CD package drag on for several years.
SG: Do the companies come back to you and say “change this” or “change that?”
FO: Always!
SG: How much are you willing to change? Is there some kind of negotiation process you go through?
FO: I try to be flexible and receptive. I know that I am not always the best judge of what is the best solution to a design problem. Negotiation? Let’s just say on more than one occasion told the client to take the job back and find someone else to do it.
Read the rest of the interview here and also make sure to check out the comments below the interview for some lovely appreciations of Frank’s fine work. Congrats, Frank!
[images by Frank Olinsky]
If you’re the NYC area, don’t miss this great program, co-hosted by Illustration faculty Pat Cummings. Brian Selznick will discuss his award-winning children’s books, his artistic process, and his experiences in the illustration industry. Should be very enlightening!
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
featuring Brian Selznick (and Pat Cummings)
BCAT (Time Warner ch. 34 & Cablevision ch. 67)
January 19th at 11:00 a.m.
If you weren’t able to attend the Illustration Department’s mini-symposium “Illustration in the Age of Anxiety” this past November, you are in luck! FORA.tv has an archive of the event which you can view at their website. The symposium focused on how illustration handles times of unease and anxiety in our culture, from the atomic anxiety of the 1950s to today’s wars and upheaval and featured three conversations lead by prominent and accomplished writers illustrators. For full descriptions of each session, check out our original write-up and make sure to head over to FORA.tv and watch the video.
[pictured above from left to right: Ruth Marten, Tara McPherson, and Nora Krug.]
Earlier this year, illustrator Zina Saunders interviewed Illustration Department Chair Steven Guarnaccia as part of her ongoing interview series with illustrators, which features artists talking about their work, as well as a portrait created on-the-spot by Zina herself. Here’s an excerpt from her talk with Steven:
Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told them I wanted to be an artist. But I never wanted to be a fine artist; I never fantasized about being a gallery painter. I wanted to do the stuff that gave me the most pleasure and the stuff that gave me the most pleasure was popular culture, comics, animation, so that’s what I figured I would end up doing. I only had a very brief crisis about the fine art/commercial art thing when I was in college at Brown University and I took classes at RISD and the kind of seriousness and dedication that the RISD students demonstrated made me think that maybe that was what being a real artist is.
But the reality of the situation was that my essential self really was not like them. I took a class as a little kid in the back of an art store, painting in oils, and I didn’t like the smell of it and I never liked getting my hands dirty. The other thing was, that my favorite fine artists in high school were Paul Klee and George Grosz and they were guys whose work looked more like my work than Monet and Picasso. Seeing Paul Klee painting in a suit, to me, seemed to make perfect sense. I was not interested in wiping painted hands on baggy blue jeans. That just wasn’t who I was.
Read the complete text of Steven’s interview here and check out more from Zina at her Drawger site.
James Sturm, illustrator and head of The Center for Cartoon Studies, is offering a fantastic preview of his upcoming work Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow. You can look at illustration drafts, see sample pages from the finished work, and read an interview with Sturm. Here’s an excerpt:
How did you settle on Satchel Paige as a subject?
Satchel Paige was the suggestion of Brenda Bowen who was the instigator of this series of books. I love American history and Paige’s life certainly highlights several compelling and tragic aspects of the American experience. I’ve always been fascinated by the Negro Leagues and the obstacles that those players faced on and off the ball field.
Rather than present a straightforward biography of Satchel Paige, the book creates a story about Emmet Wilson, a Black Alabama sharecropper of the 1930s, for whom Satchel Paige becomes a major touchstone. What made you decide to take this approach?
Paige did a great job of mythologizing himself and it was hard to separate the facts of his life from the fiction. And in the end, I didn’t want to. What was important to me, and what I decided I wanted the book to be about, was the impact he had on society and those that followed his career.
Read the complete interview here and also stop by Drawn!, who gave us the heads up about this exciting resource.
(Image by James Sturm)
Bush by Nora Krug
Back in October, Spraygraphic Apparel interviewed Illustration FT Faculty Nora Krug for their blog. Spraygraphic strives to highlight artists and designers that create culturally conscious, socially active and politically provocative work. Here’s an excerpt from Nora’s interview:
Describe your working process when creating a new work.
NK: I easily get bored once I notice I’m using similar concepts, compositions and media and I try to always explore new themes and ways of working. When working on a personal piece the process can be really torturing. I can get very deeply involved and forget where I am. Every time it feels like I’m starting at the very beginning, like a puzzle with thousands of parts, and no reference image on the cover. I take a long time for sketches and I often have no idea what the final piece will look like. Every line I draw can be a struggle. But when I’m done and happy with the way it looks I feel extremely fulfilled. It’s a completely different story with my commercial work. I work much faster there and have a good sense of what the final piece will look like.
What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
NK: I get very annoyed and angry and can’t stop thinking about possible solutions. It takes me an hour or so of socializing and thinking of something else until I emerge on the surface again. Usually the only way out is continuing to draw and redraw until it works. Sometimes it also helps me to distract myself while I’m working, because then the whole focus isn’t only on my fear of not being able to create what I want. I love listening to BBC Radio 4 and 7 online.
Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
NK: In everything. People, films, music, books, other people’s art. I’m also very inspired by peoples’ lives that have nothing to do with the arts.
Make sure you read the rest of the interview here for more insights about Nora’s work and interests.
Also, you can access the archive of other fantastic artist interviews by Spraygraphic here.
Congratulations, Nora!
While sifting through the blogroll, I came across this interview from August with recent Illustration alum Philip Fivel Nessen. He talks about the development of his style, his methods of finding work, and what inspires him. Here’s a brief excerpt:
The first time I noticed illustration was a Henrik Drescher drawing in the New York Times book review. It was an Uncle Sam head, with spider legs, and I think lasers for eyes. It had people running through the spider legs. I think that’s where my interest in visual arts started. I find Monet sort of boring. As for doing work, I got a few jobs just through my website before I started doing any promotion or meeting with anyone. Then I sent out postcards and took my portfolio to a few places and got some good advice and some more jobs. And then I did an Illustration Friday interview.
At first it was a very calculated thing. I spent like a month cutting things out and taking notes. Just sort of figuring out where I could fit into the illustration business and be sort of novel but also reflect stuff I really like. I also wanted to sort of look like a late 1950s, early 1960s illustrator. After I started drawing more new stylistic things popped up in response to different things. Thick lines, thin lines, abstract people, figural people. Whatever. Things are still working themselves out. I sort of hope I end up like one of those guys comfortable enough to do work that’s not the same story over and over. There is definitely a fine line between hopeless and multi-dimensional.
Read the rest of the interview here (and make sure you take a look around the rest of the Illustration Friday site for great interviews and image galleries).
(Image by Philip Fivel Nessen)