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Sunday, February 5, 2012
A-BOY: Hey, Jake. What’s crack-a-lacking, homie?!?
JAKE: Just working away as usual, finishing off an installation which is probably my biggest project to date, certainly the most time consuming.I’ve got a few other projects on the go too, including a 12″ featuring some great bands, really looking forward to getting those back from the pressing plant. I really think it’s important to keep a balance between doing your own projects and working on commission based stuff, always nice to know that if a project gets a bit tedious you can have a break and work on something else for a while.
I also just bought a Lap Steel guitar yesterday so i’m going to be learning to play that.
A-BOY: Please give the readers a brief autobiography…
JAKE: Well i graduated from Brighton University in 2008, just over a year ago and i’ve been freelancing since then. I made the move up to London because i thought i’d stand a better chance of getting work and it seems to be working so far, i really wasn’t expecting to be able to survive as a freelance illustrator straight out of uni and it has been a struggle at times but things seem to gradually be getting easier.
Before i moved down to Brighton i live in the Peak District which is where i grew up. It’s a very picturesque place as you’d expect and i think living in that environment probably has a big impact on my work, nature in general being an obvious influence.
A-BOY: Going into your working life… your style of illustration is simultaneously cohesive, sophisticated and playful. A lot of people probably think it’s easy to draw the way you do, but I can tell there’s more thinking to it than meets the eye.
JAKE: I do draw in quite an unusual way i think, it’s certainly not something that comes naturally to anyone, including myself, i’ve had to teach myself to work in this way. I think the main thing that people don’t realise is that everything is hand drawn as separate shapes and then coloured digitally, often what appears to be a line is actually just the gap between the shapes, the lines being lost in the colouring process. I’m hoping to start doing more work without the digital element, colouring by hand or just leaving them as line drawings, i think the images almost look more detailed before they are coloured in.
The reason i draw like this is because it forces me to look at things in a different way, picking out shapes and patterns, rather than outlines. It just makes me consider things more before i put a mark on the paper.
A-BOY: Why is there so much talent in illustration in London? The legendary Heath Robinson hailed from there, too! What’s in the food, man!??
JAKE: I suppose that being in the UK the only place you’re really likely to get where you need to be is to be in London, there are hundreds, probably thousands of illustrators here, all jostling to try and get some work, the sad thing is that alot of the really talented people fall by the wayside. Of course there are illustrators in the UK that aren’t living in London but i bet all of them have exhibited here and had a good portion of their work from clients based here.
It seems like theres a huge number of talented illustrators in London, but when you’re actually here you realise that probably only 5% of them are actually finding work in illustration so there’s probably even more that you don’t know about. Having said that there seems to be a really nice community of illustrators here, people help each other out and are generally happy to work on projects with each other and generally be supportive, i don’t think i’d even be close to where i am now if it weren’t for the help of other illustrators and designers, there’s no shame in asking people for advice if you need it.
What makes his work stand out or interesting is the way he thinks about his work. He makes the process so inventive. Everyone understands what causes these environments to rot and collapse. What Shawn was interested in however, was recreating these environments using the tools that helped destroy them in the first place. He went on to tell me that by exposing his work to the elements, he could re-create the scenario of what happened to these grimy buildings. He attacks his canvases made of wood or metal with fire and water. It’s as much an additive method as it is reductive, he often deciding to carve right into his pieces.
