Sunday 15 May 2011

Contact with artists...


Matt Jones




Anna Mullins




Andrew Hickinbottom



I have never really enjoyed the thought of this part of the PDP, I have tried contacting some artists in the past and received nothing from them.. not even an acknowledgment of my email but at the same time.. i imagine they receive tonnes of emails from students, fans and just general strangers asking the same boring questions and probably the stupidest question of all.. how can i draw like you....

Even so, I have managed to get in touch with 3 artists whose work I admire and it has been mainly through Twitter. As I've said previously.. I find artists are much more willing to respond to shorter messages to start with. I feel I have actually started to form the beginnings of a friendship with these people purely by being so chatty with them. If we were all located locally i probably would've arranged to meet up with them also... but I digress.. I managed to get in touch with Andrew Hickinbottom a 3D artist who mainly work in character design, Lunartik aka Matt Jones who is famous for his vinyl figures and Sneaky Raccoon aka Anna Mullins who also creates vinyl toys but freelances as an art director also. Now as I said, I kept things very chatty and pleasant with these artists and also assured them that I was only asking questions for my own benefit.. not for some magazine or anything.. my conversations with Andrew and Anna are to be kept private... a print out of them is available with my work for the tutors to review but the third one by Matt was added onto the end of an interview he was already undertaking.. he basically asked his twitter followers if they had any questions.. I sent him roughly 10 but i think he chose to answer just a few of his faves... here...

or my questions only...

I got this Series of Questions from @Howker


Q: some of your characters/drawings seem a little surreal/alien-like, where do you draw inspiration from?

MJ: I guess that’s the way my brain goes at the moment, I try and develop the ideas up as I go along and mix up things at the moment with my Daily Sketches. I just finished a sketch book, and it will be live soon.

There also seems to be themes of Space, Sci-Fi and futuristic ideas running through some of your work… is this something you’re interested in outside of your artwork filtering back in?
MJ: I think the space you’re referring to is actually Tea, and the SIFI-Ness is just a style of drawing.
I guess from an onlooker’s perspective its SI-FI but I never thought of it in that way. Food for thought!

How do you begin a piece of work, whether it is digital, painted or sculpted? is there a lot of sketching in terms of composition/posture etc or do you just naturally play with ideas?
MJ: Time, sketching, making up ideas in my head, and then getting them ASAP onto paper.

When in London (and now Berlin)… did you work in a design studio or from home as a freelance artist? (if both, which did you prefer?)
MJ: Home is best!



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