Chris Haughton Interview

There is an interview on Chris Haughton's blog. I have distilled it down to the questions and answers that I think help my practice and how I think about my work.

When you were creating your new works every time, Where did you getthe greatest inspirations from? For instance, from family life,daydreams, love story or walking in a forest etc.
for visual inspiration what makes me excited is looking at unusual ways of representation and image making. things like old maps and folk art and embroideries, anything that ignores perspective and other rules in favour of narrative or simplicity is interesting to me.
for writing i am often inspired by funny sentences or words or mis-translations. that sort of thing. i used to write down odd things i found funny for no reason here and there in my sketchbooks, just odd sentences if i found them amusing. i had no real way of using them until i started writing picture books. now since i have discovered that i can make use of these in my books  i have begun doing it more, and with more purpose.

Is there a certain working pattern/routine to follow when you are making your illustrations? (it could be both spiritually or physically)Which part in your working process would be the most exciting one?
If i am given a brief i would think about it and maybe sleep on it and wait for something to inspire me. sometimes i would come up with something in the first 20 mins or so or sometimes it would take a day or so.. sometimes i start out with one idea and it evolves into another. it all depends really. you need to be flexible in order to try and harness any better ideas you might stumble upon while executing it.
come up with the ideas are usually the most exciting but i also like finishing off and tweaking an illustration if its one i really like. its nice to really polish something if you are proud of it.

Do you have a believe/spirit in art /design /illustration field?  Where does it guide you to go? 
i think design has a potential for great things. it can make our world and communication clearer and more beautiful. it can help communicate things that are unable to be communicated by language. sadly, perhaps because of its power in communication, it really has been totally hi-jacked by advertising and corporate communication. the word ‘design’ has kind of become synonymous with branding. i would love to counter that.

What is the biggest difficulty in your work? How did you / will you pass over it?

i had a big problem with using colour. I actually was particularly bad at using colour when i started off… the images i produced were almost entirely black and white or ‘duotone‘. although i loved colour i couldnt incorporate it into my own illustrations somehow.. Every time i tried to colour my images they tended to look cheap and cartoony, i was doing this using the magic wand tool in photoshop and it just looked like a drawing that had been coloured in on the computer and looked pretty cheap. It was only when i started making artwork for people tree which is all screen-printed that i began experimenting with with unrealistic colours. i just layed a few sreenprints on top of each other and realised i could build up whole scenes and landscapes using this process that there was a breakthrough. in fact it was a really huge breakthrough for me… one minute i was using almost entirely duotone images and the next i was doing entirely full colour. to explain this image was made in this way. each element was made in ‘duotone’ but using different base colours. when they are placed together on one page they together make a colourful image then i later evolved that kind of image making into this..

When he talks about colour I can relate entirely and he points out the importance of experimenting with processes as that is where he found a breakthrough. I try to create block shape illustrations and in illustrator the colours often look cartoony and cheap as he says. I often digitally add textures to my work that seems to help give them life and form. I think a lot of colours look terrible on screen and need to be printed to a high quality to really see their value. Unfortunately this can become a time consuming and costly process. I might make a sheet of test colours and print it off as a poster that I could use as a guide.

Chris Haughton

I emailed Chris Haughton yesterday with a like to my book about escapism mentioning that his work was an inspiration to me and thanking him. I wasn't expecting a response to be honest but I did get a very nice email back this morning saying...

"Nice one Joe!

it looks great!!! :)

i went to leeds Met as an exchange student about 13 years ago!"

It was really nice to get a response, even a short one. This doesn't help with my attempts to interview a practitioner specifically but it does give me more confidence to approach more professionals. I am going to try and contact Keith Negley and Dieter Braun as I think their experience of the industry I want to break into would be extremely helpful.

Colours May Vary

We went to a talk today with the owners of Colours May vary, they mentioned that they were open to looking at some work we had made to give feedback and possibly stock in the shop. I had already been advised to show one of my projects to them so I took a copy of my book with me. They said that its best to leave the work with them so they can have a good look at it rather than trying to give feedback in a busy shop without really getting a feel for the book. I need to email them so that they have my contact information and then see what feedback I get and even see if they would think of stocking my work after I have made some changes.

Contacting practitioners

I have been meaning to get in touch with a number of practitioners in the industry for a while now, I think I was putting it off because I find the idea quite daunting. I had a few ideas how to get started and had some suggestions from the tutors. I made a book based on Neil Gaiman who is very active on social media and it was suggested to me to contact him via twitter. I have been trying to find the best way to showcase my book as it is a concertina it is three and a half metres long. I decided to use Tumblr as I could create post of high quality images that group all of the pages of the book together. I have tweeted Neil Gaiman with a link to the Tumblr page and have also sent an email to Chris Haughton who has been a huge inspiration on my practice and that book in particular. I was hoping to find an alternative way to contact him other than email but I couldn't find one that I thought would be better. I know that there will be lots of demands on the practitioners I have tried to contact and that their time will be precious to them. I am not holding out too much hope but I wanted to aim high. I am not going to be put off if I don't get any reply from them I am going to keep trying to contact practitioners that I believe could help inform my practice.

Chris Haughton mentions on the contact page of his website that he shares interviews and videos on his blog, including interviews that are based around getting into illustration. I have had a quick look and the questions he is asked mirror some of the questions I would have asked. I am going to have another read through the full interview and try to filter out the information that relates to me and how I could use it to move forward.

Collaboration

Working as a group of practitioners for the collaborative section of the responsive module has been challenging. As a group we decided on a brief that was well outside my comfort zone and practice. I did not think that the process itself would be particularly useful to my practice but working as part of a group would help me develop skills that would. As a group we have kept in communication regularly throughout the project but mostly through online messenger apps, the problem with this is it causes delays, if you are waiting for a group decision to be made it can take a long time to reach a consensus slowing down the work rate. The main problem with communicating online is that it is not instant, it is not easy to bounce ideas off each other and brainstorm naturally, communication and then though processes and ideas become disjointed.

getting feedback from the group was difficult as well, I think we all lacked the confidence to be critical and provide constructive feedback. Feedback was generally encouraging which is nice and could be useful in certain circumstances but does not help us reflect on our work and evaluate its successes and failings. I think this module has taught me the pro's and con's of methods of communication and the importance of polite but critical feedback. I will be working with other practitioners as well as authors and publishers in the future and will need to be able to react well critical feedback and be able to clearly communicate my own ideas and opinions.

keith Negley

I want to get in touch with Keith Negley and hopefully interview him as part of this brief, he currently lives in Washington so I will have to find a way conduct the interview over long distance. The best way would most likely be a skype interview as I could record it, watch it back and take notes afterwards. A phone call would be more difficult to record and an email would be too impersonal and not allow me to ask follow up questions.

On keith Negley's website it lists the postal address of his studio, I would like to send him a letter and possibly some of my work. I think this is a much better idea than sending an email which as I said before is impersonal and more likely to be ignored. If I don't manage to interview Keith Negley I need to stay positive and not be put off asking. The main thing for now is to chose some work of mine that is relevant to Keith Negleys practice or that I think he might appreciate or get his attention. I also want to start coming up with a list of questions I would like to ask. I need to make sure they are appropriate questions that will help inform my practice.

- What adjustments did you have to make to your work when you transitioned into illustrating children's books?......which was the most difficult?

- How did you get your work published?.... did you work to a brief or was it personal work?

-What makes up the majority of your work?... children's books, editorial, etc?

- What would you say are the most important lessons you have learnt as a professional illustrator?

Escapism Book

I made a book for 504 based on a quote by Neil Gaiman. It has been suggested to me that I get in touch with him on social media to show him they book. I would love to get some feedback from him. he has been a huge inspiration for me, not just in that project but in all my recent work. It has also been suggested that I should talk to local book shops to se if they would be interesting in stocking a limited run of the book. I am a bit apprehensive but think it would be useful for me to gain some experience of communicating with publishers and retailers. I am happy with the contents of my book but I am not happy with the finishing details like the way the book is folded and the cover. I would like to make some new versions of the book to try and overcome the problems I had the first time round. I want to be confident in the book before I present it to anyone else, I think it is important to have confidence in what I make so that I can pitch it with confidence. If I try and pitch a book that I see faults in and the same faults are pointed out to me I won't learn anything. I want to make the book as well as I know how to and hen if I ma told to make changes I can learn from the feedback.

Jobs

A couple more jobs I did for people recently, one is a t shirt design for a boxing gym and the other is a logo for a clothing company. I seem to be getting a lot of graphic design jobs recently. I don't think they help my practice in terms of my illustrations but they do help me to understand design which is something I would like to learn more about. I want to write and illustrate children's books so learning more about type will make my practice more diverse.

Presentation

These are my slides from the presentation we did today. I tried to use the process to highlight to me the questions I want to ask that would benefit me the most. I want to try and contact a number of people on this list. I have aimed high trying to get in touch with successful practitioners that will be in demand and busy. I would like to ask them about their journey from where I am now to being a successful practitioner. The illustrators I have chosen are mostly children's book illustrators and I would like to know how they have had to alter their practice to suite the age ranges that their books are aimed at. It would also be useful to talk to publishers as they will have the same issues deciding what is and isn't appropriate. I would like to know how they got broke into the industry and got their first 'big' job. I have no experience of pitching my ideas to publishers so I would like to know how the illustrators I have chosen have found that process and if they have any advice for me. I will have to try and find creative ways to get in touch with these practitioners, I would like to send them some of my work that is relevant to their own practice to try and get some feedback.

Meh

I have got stuck in a bit of a rut so I want to try and make a game plan that can help me to break out of it. I feel like I have made some big steps forward at the beginning of this year and now I'm just going through the motions. I feel like I am rushing parts of my process and following a set routine of how to make images instead of experimenting and researching. I think this is partially due to putting pressure on myself to be up to date on all my work even when my work suffers because of it. It has started to make me feel down about my work even though I feel I have made progress. I want to get back to concentrating on improvement and experimentation without worrying about every image I make being 'good'.

I want to illustrate children's books, it has become more and more clear to me recently that that is the avenue I want to go down. I think the 505 module will give me the opportunity to have some freedom to experiment with my image making and with my own choice of subject matter. Because recently I have been tying up the 504 module, working on my essay for COP and researching I feel I have been blogging way more than actually producing work, and when I have made work for responsive I feel I have played it safe to an extent. It is the cycle of making some changes in my practice that I like then I stop experimenting rather then continue to develop. I seem to come to this point every so often, I think it is inevitable I will feel like this from time to time and I need to improve how quickly I recognise and overcome it.

I need to

-Research children's book authors and illustrators

-Experiment with different media

-Remake my books from 504 and show it to publishers and book shops

-Print out my book covers for responsive to see how they will look

-Not worry so much about being up to date

-Not worry about everything looking good

-Research the publishing industry

Practice presentation

I made my presentation slides and practiced my presentation with a timer so that I could get a better idea of how to make my prompts. The second slide was difficult, I realised I can not go through each individual illustrator, I just about have enough time to talk about two of them. I decided to use the two most different practitioners to demonstrate the variation in my choices and talk about why they are both equally important but in different ways. I have made a list of prompts for each slide, I want to practice with these prompts until I am comfortable without them.

Slide 1

-My practice has changed

-Book illustration

- Write and illustrate

Slide 2

- Wide variety of practitioners

- Chris Haughton, simple immersive

- Neil Gaiman, outspoken knowledgeable , understanding of the world

Slide 3

- Keith Negley transitioned to books

-unusual subject matter

- how he chooses , what inspires him and how does he decide what is appropriate.

Creative presence Presentation Script Drafts

Slide 1

My practice has changed considerably over the last year concentrating more and more on book illustration specifically children's books. I have changed the way I think about my work, simplifying my illustrations and focussing on communicating emotions and themes successfully. I want to create work that helps people to understand the world around them. I want to make work that tackles unusual but important issues that are often overlooked. I would like to learn more about the processes involved in publishing from creating a professionally finished product to pitching my work to a publisher.

Slide 2

I have chosen a variety of practitioners from the creative industries that all have links to children's book publishing or publishing in general. I have tried to chose people that work in different roles or approach their work in a variety of ways, I think each of them could provide a different but equally useful insight into the creative industries. The two illustrators I chose were Chris Haughton and Keith Negley because their work stands out both visually and conceptually. Chris Haughton's work is beautifully made and uses simple shapes to create immersive landscapes and appealing characters, he has been a big influence on my work over the last year. Keith Negley's books use humour and subject matter that children and parents will relate to. I have also included publishers and writers in my list that could help me to understand the industry and how I could become part of it.

Slide 3

I have been struggling to chose one person out of my list but I think the practitioner that could help me the most is Keith Negley. He has a diverse portfolio and manages to tailor his work to suite its purpose. I would like to ask him about his transition to children's book illustration, if it has changed his creative practice and where he draws inspiration from. He lives in Washington, USA so I would have to interview him via skype or email. The postal address of his studio is listed on his website so I could write to him and possibly send some of my work.