Benjamin Wachenje Interview...

This is the Interview, I conducted with A personal Inspiration of mine, The established Illustrator, Benjamin Wachenje on 21st January 2013, I found him such an approachable and friendly person, who answered all of my questions in a full and honest way, It was quite an honour for me to get this opportunity, so I hope you enjoy reading it and find it as helpful as I did!

ME: Hi Ben, 

Instead of sending a block of questions, I figured I'd send them one at a time,

it seems less formal and leaves room for to chop and change the questions if your answers allow.

Hope thats ok?

O.k, my first question.... As a dad to 3 young kids myself, I was wondering how you find a balance between your work (as its obviously a time consuming

working method) and your duties as a dad.

Do you think you have achieved a perfect balance or is it something you are still working at?

BW: No balance whatsoever. Sometimes I work so hard that I sleep on the sofa in the studio. Other times I will be having so much fun with my family that I will end up pushed to the limit to meet a deadline.  For the last two years I have worked from home 90% of the time. As a family I think we are much stronger now, but finically we are weaker than when I would spend 90% of the time in the studio.

ME: You wouldn't believe how much relief that answer has given me,

As I struggle to manage the time between the my art and family so to know such an established Illustrator as yourself also has not got a balance,

I can stop letting it be such a major issue and just crack on as I have been, thanks!

I struggle to compromise on my Creative Ideologies when working in a team so end up quite defensive and stubborn

Do you collaborate with other Artists and Illustrators often? and if so how do you find working in a team?

BW: I do lots of collaborations. Sometimes, humbly, I disagree with the direction and will try persuasive arguments. When these don't work I take a step back to see if I might be missing something. Usually you collaborate with somebody because you respect their artistry so I look into their suggestion to see if I have overlooked what they are driving at. I learned from painting the importance of viewing your work from a distance and from different angles. Even when I am not collaborating I consult the opinions of my wife, children and others in the studio to get their take sometimes I don't like what they say, but I still listen and continue to ask their opinion. That said, I think its equally important to cultivate solitude and create spontaneous work, even if nobody else likes it. 

ME: Maybe I just need to be a little less protective and actually learn to compromise more,

I understand what you mean though, my Brother is my fiercest critic but also one of my biggest supporter, it was him that actually pushed me to finally going to uni at the age of 28.

I First came across your work when i saw the Billboards for GTA San Andreas, and its influenced and inspired my art since.

Did Rockstar enlist you for the new game and where do you find inspiration for such a fictional and dark subject as found in 

games?

BW: But also at uni you don't always get to chose who you collaborate with so it is a little different and sometimes more problematic.

Good for you. My wife is studying again at 38. I would like to go back and develop my animation skills maybe when my wife is a qualified teacher I will be able to do a part time course. Where are you studying? what course?

With the GTA billboards I was only ever commissioned to paint the backgrounds from already existing screen grabs. All of the subject matter and character development is done at Rockstar and then the paintings are commissioned. The characters are developed by Steven Bliss who is the Art Director. In the 90's and early 00's I couldn't get any agents to represent me. Steven Bliss was already established and being offered so much work that he was turning it down. The Central Illustration Agency offered to represent me knowing that I could pick up the contracts that Steven was turning down. I was surprised when they called me because I had taken my book to them 6 months earlier and was told that I wasn't the right fit for their agency. I have been with them for nearly 10 years now. I have worked with Rockstar games on 2 GTA titles and also Red Dead Redemption. But the long and short of it is that I do donkey work for GTA, the creative genius belongs to my stable mate mr. Bliss. 

ME: Im doing a BA Hons in Illustration at Stockport, I agree with you, not being able to choose who I worked with Immediately put a dampener on my creativity,

I did learn to grin and bare it but refused to compromise on my Ideas,

But in the end it just caused conflict and the final outcomes suffered, so I suppose I learned the lesson the hard way.

I'll be having a look at Mr. Bliss' work a bit later as well!

Donkey work or not, its Inspired a whole artistic chapter in my life so thank you!

while we are on the uni subject i'll show you my reproductions, the card player, is probably one of my favourite pieces of your work, thats why I chose that to copy,

and after realising how pain staking it was, (i quit on the pinstripes before my hair went grey) and the woman with the guitar was paint on canvas as im much comfier using that media! digital is fairly new to me so i resorted back to what i know, but my question is do you have a particularly piece that you are especially proud of?

BW: Wow these are great. The card player is dope. I hate pinstripes.

I don't really have any work that I am proud of. Nearly all of my work is commercial or commissioned. I think I will be proud when I have created some of the conceptional work that has been buzzing around in my head.

I have just finished working with TY (UK based Rapper) the 3 pieces on Magenta are parts of the new EP art. Please be desecrate with these as the artwork is still under wraps. I like these because it is a return to my first days as an illustrator. In 1997 I was commissioned by Vox magazine to do an illustration of Jarvis Cocker. I cut bits of coloured paper out and stuck them down on a sheet of black leaving parts of the black to show through and divide the colours. I worked like this for several years before getting my first mac in 1999 at which point I recreated the style digitally. Its nice to go back and cut out card again. All of the typography is paper engineering. I also enjoyed the 2010 project with TY because I got to sculpt him out of wood. The GAGA illustration was fun because I subtly characterised her. I like the picture of my son with the AK47 because of its political connotations, I had just turned down a job with the US army worth over $100,000. Since I had decided not to help them create recruitment posters I thought I had better make some pro-peace images. It really helped take my mind off the $100,000 I had kissed good bye to and made me consider how powerful art can be. I like the Jameelia Jamil portrait for purely superficial reasons. Bruce Lee because it is solid colours no tones, but it still works. The painting of Logic because it was quick and fun to do. The woman on the sofa because it was so technical, my wife and I also got to stay in that hotel and it was lavish. Oh and one of my favourite clients is Jonzi-D and Breakin' Convention. Its a B-Boy festival that is celebrating its 10th year in 2013. I have worked on it since the start.

 

           

                                                                                                                             

                                                                                                                                      

          

The images above, were included in Ben's final E-mail, an example of just how helpful he was throughout the Interview, I have also, kept in touch since and still find Ben to be friendly and accommodating considering how busy he is, left me a very grateful chap indeed! so once again,

Thanks Ben!!

                                                        

The Big Sleep!

February, I was given a brief that I really got my teeth into!
It was to develop and design the cover for the Penguin Published book, 'The Big Sleep' by Raymond Chandler,
First things first, I had to familiarise myself with the story, so borrowed the book and locked myself away with it, until I had read it, this wasn't a hard thing to do as it's actually a good and engaging read.
The Ideas were flowing as I was reading, until somebody told me, (as I was halfway through) that Humphrey Bogart had played the main character,  A Private Eye named Phillip Marlowe, In a movie adaptation, this stemmed the flow a little as Bogart was hijacking all my thoughts and appearing in every idea!

And so after reading the book, and making notes of key points, characters and other things I found to be important, reoccurring themes etc.

after building a 'sense of place' file for everything related to the story, from fashion and buildings to cars and decor of 30's America, I was itching to get started!

This is how I got going...

 

Some quick sketches working with objects that play parts in the story, 

I was trying to be experimental as usual, so as well as pencil, I was playing with water colours and crayon as well. Not the kind of media I'm used to using.

I was playing with lots of ideas the book gave me, stained glass was another...

I was enjoying the Ideas and thought process's that was producing these piece's of work but did not feel they would translate well enough into a book cover so I kept going.....

I really liked this drawing, it was more representative of my own personal style but still didn't think it would work well, as I would struggle to work a typeface into or around it, so kept going, and came up with this one as a rough idea....

So, using layout templates, I developed this idea, added some hand rendered type face,...

Eventually, settling on the type in the bottom left corner, I took my ideas to the computer, and after smashing my Ideas together, with some help from a friend, I settled on a layout for my final piece,...

Apologies for the wonky photography, this is the first draft of my final piece, it needs some polishing and refinement but the process of toying with numerous ideas rather than attempting to just develop my first idea, left me with a sense of pride rather than a thought of maybe I could have done more, so this brief gave me much more than just a challenge I welcomed but a new understanding of work process's that will serve me well in coming briefs!.

And...Just received an E-mail from Benjamin Wachenje, Giving permission to publish the interview I conducted with him, that will be up shortly!

Contacting Practioners

Its been way too long since my last post, no excuse, just slack blog management, apologies!....
Right now thats out of the way, I have had quite a busy start to 2013, art wise!
January started well, I got into contact with my favourite Illustrator, Benjamin Wachenje, a real Inspiration for me, and a very easy going and approachable guy.
I asked if I could get ask him some questions regarding life as an illustrator and his practises in general,
I got quite a quick and friendly response.
We set a date for the Interview to take place, via E-mail as he is set up in London and I'm in Manchester.
So on The 21st of January, I started asking my questions,.. The answers though, I cant post just yet as I'm waiting on permission from Ben to say wether he minds me publishing his answers online.
Soon as I get permission, or not I will post the interview for all to see.

Cross Pathways

I have spent the last 3 weeks or so working alongside a graphic designer on a cross pathways project to create a fictional event and attempt to make it believable or as close to as possible, in short.
I teamed up with a graphics student who is also a friend of mine, thinking, in my infinite wisdom that that would be a positive thing and would help the process.
It was not a complete failure and was not all bad but it was surely an eye opener and an educating experience, I learnt a lot and took may lessons from it, and I shall attempt to explain what they are.
Firstly me and my team mate sat and discussed possible ideas through text, face to face meetings and via email.

We were flying through and the ideas we had were starting to excite us as a team and we began to expand the idea of faking a UFO crash landing in a local forest.
As we began to build on our initial ideas we started to lack direction and have difference of opinions in what we should do next and with the delegation of jobs.
The work didn't suffer from our bickering and tired eye rolling as we managed to work past our problems but I feel that with a little more compromise from both sides would have seen our project flourish.
The problems, in my opinion stemmed from us both being strong willed and confident people who like to lead, with neither really wanting to step back and allow the other to take control.
Although this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does not help when working in a team.
The work was coming along, we had some good ideas and some others that just felt like a waste of time in the end as we scrapped them, and felt it was time we could have used doing other things.
We mocked up newspaper headlines and 'top secret' documents from 'eye witnesses' each with a back story and biography.

We also had a lot of fun with the project I don't want to push the idea that we spent the whole time disagreeing, as we had agreed while writing our team manifesto at the start of the project that the main thing we wanted to do was have fun with the project.

Filming Witness interviews in a spoof manner allowed us to really open up and just behave like a pair of clowns, and during the presentations to the rest of our group, the videos (which were one of the ideas we scrapped) the interviews proved quite popular and made 95% of the group laugh, which was what we wanted more than anything, thats the reason we had chosen such a far out idea with no imagination barriers.

In the end, we had some good ideas but due to the lack of direction and maybe due to us being so familiar with each other we did not have a big a body of work that we would have liked but the work we did have, we both felt was good and we were happy with.

A lot of the work we ended up with though, was not work we could physically show but was more mental, we found out a lot about each other and ourselves.

I for one found out what it must be like to work with me in a team, and so on the next available opportunity to work in a team I will make a conscious decision to sit back and allow somebody else to lead unless asked or nominated, just to see if the outcome is any different.

So in hind sight it was not a bad experience but a rather valuable one, with many important lessons learned about myself and about the ethics and compromise involved with team work, which personally speaking I think was what the brief was about more so than the final outcome.

Upping the Output

Again, I have left it way too long since my last post.
There is no real excuse for this except I am struggling for motivation and content at the minute!
I have been on the look out for something new, something that really strikes me, something that does not just attract me but jumps out, slaps my face, ruffles my hair and says HERE I AM!.
So far...nothing, but i will keep searching and hopefully find this Holy Grail of inspiration and then my blog will explode and it wont be six weeks between posts!
In the mean time, I am just going to have to give myself a kick in the rear and just work a bit harder I suppose,
So what have I been doing when not looking for the ultimate inspiration!?...
Looking at Banksy, that's what *sigh*... personally Banksy's work does not tickle my fancy or make me sit up thinking WOW!!.
Granted, Banksy has found a way of expressing his political views and opinions to the masses while keeping his anonymity, I cannot understand the simple fact his work is seen as art and yet other pieces of Graffiti or Street Art which even at the slightest glance or to the least artistic eye are a hundred times more complicated and time consuming are considered mere vandalism.
Anyway my tangent there is taking me off point, I was looking at his work not as an admirer but as somebody looking for examples of protest art, and love it or hate it, this is something that Banksy does very well.
The satire and wit found within Banksy's work appeals to me, the fun and cheek of certain pieces really stands out as something i can relate to.
I played with the idea of some cross over work, perhaps stencils and photography, (also using Ben Heine as inspiration) to produce some protest art of my own.
Then comes the personal conflict, should I? or do I continue to forage and scrap around my own mind in an attempt to come up with something entirely original? Is there anything left to be considered original!?
(I would normally include a link to her website here but i struggled to find one)
So... I continued looking.... onto Gillian Wearing, and her 'Confessions' works, this gave me an idea surrounding people, and their opinions, because how can you protest without people!?.
That leads me to where I am today really!... a head full of half ideas and a few large scruffy sheets of rough doodles!
Hopefully in the next blog, I will have had a brain wave, a superfluous idea or just plain old struck by lightning and in that case probably wont care about protest art!
Either way it wont be six weeks until the next post!!
Ill leave you with some of the images that I found lit small fires of inspiration under me to at least get me to this point.

Above are a couple of examples of Ben Heine's camera vs pencil works, I chose these Images because i felt they carried underlying messages about society today, religion and other such topics, below is another link to the artists website

http://www.benheine.com/ (actually a really nice website, I sat, just watching the homepage for ten  minutes!)

Above is Bankys's work, I dont think they need much of an explaination really, his work speaks for itself and always works better when the viewer is drawing his/her own conclusions on it.

Again a link to his website... http://www.banksy.co.uk/

And finally two exmples of Gillian Wearings 'Confessions', id like to provide a link to her website but cant seem to find one that isnt sourced by that pesky wikipedia.

Chimps, Prints and Presentations

So...In my last blog, I said how I had missed a part of the summer brief based around my animal spirit, so in the time since my last blog I have been trying to put this right.
To do this,... I have taken a long hard look at myself, and my personality and eventually coming to the conclusion that if I was an animal, I would be a Chimpanzee....with a Mancunian accent.
Right then, off I went researching Chimps, which in parts was actually really fun!.
Taking my kids to the Welsh Mountain Zoo in Colwyn Bay and taking photos of the troop of Chimps that reside there.
Also reading about them and looking for photos of them in their natural environment and learning about their behaviours...and after a while it was clear I'm actually more like a Chimpanzee than I even initially figured.
They are a notoriously territorial species and protective of their young, but also intelligent and fun loving as well.
These were not the only factors in my choosing the chimpanzee as my animal spirit but they were probably the main ones.
Here's a few of the Photos I took while at the Zoo, apologies for the quality but it was a bad day and they were taken through fairly thick glass.

After my research I wrote my animal memoirs, I can honestly say that I have never had so much fun while writing a piece of creative writing, I pretty much laughed the whole time I was writing it, As I was writing in entirely in a Mancunian accent, this led to my comic strip which I also had so much fun drawing! 

Here it is...

From this I began creating hybrids of the Chimps and my Pulp Fiction drawings from my previous blog, or basically turning the movies characters into Chimpanzees. Here are some of them....

I thinks its fairly obvious that I also had a lot of fun creating these!.

These images also became the 1st step along in the 3-D model aspect of the 1st brief I was given for the 2nd year of my course.

Chimpanzee's also take a central role in my repeating pattern for the wall paper aspect of my new brief as well, the image below is going to be the key element within the pattern, wether it will work or not remains to be seen but I suppose experimenting is all part of the course and procedure.

Well I think that's all I have in the way of monkeys until my screen print and 3-D model are completed but as soon as they are I shall share them and what i think of the outcomes.

That leads me onto the pod cast presentations that the group started to do on Friday afternoons...

The pod cast titled The State Of Illustration which if I'm honest i still have not heard, due to catching up with my Monkey related work, was well covered by the three classmates and brought up some good arguments for the rest of the group to discuss, even though we did not go into too much depth with it being the last thing on a Friday! 

I will listen to the pod cast and draw my own conclusions in my next post.

No time wasted!

Again, I have left it way too long since I last updated this, my apologies for that,
I put it down to trying to balance so many aspects of my personal life.
Anyway now that's out the way Ill attempt to explain and show exactly what I have been doing with my time.
Firstly, I accidentally stumbled across the Generation Gallery in Manchester, It is situated on New York St behind the Piccadilly plaza for those interested.
It specialises in Urban, Contemporary and Modern art, I spent the best part of an hour walking round looking at the works the exhibit and sell, some of it is mind blowing and similar to the paintings I do and sell (examples of which will be further down).
Its the kind of place that appeals to both the Illustrator and the child in me, an inspiring place!
http://www.generationgallery.com/
Take a look for yourself, the staff in there are very helpful and approachable too
Now onto more pressing matters, my own work!. Because I'm an idiot and didn't read the summer brief properly I missed a whole section (something I'm putting right at the moment),
so due to the fact Id missed the section, I figured I had lots of spare time, in which I painted some canvasses Id been commissioned to do, here's a few of them...

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction

This is actually a reproduction I was asked to do, since the original was by an artist I admire and respect, Ben Wachenje, I naturally jumped at the chance

Marlon Brando as Don Corleone

Another project I have gotten involved in is designing logo's and ideas for a friend of mine who is bringing our a line of clothes based on Manchester, its people, towns and connections.

Since a lot of them are still in production I cant really post too much, but i will show this one as its a little too advanced at the current time...

Keep your eyes peeled for 'Manni' clothes in shops and on the streets!

Right onto the work I did manage to do after reading SOME of the brief,

The film I eventually chose to draw from after some serious deliberation was Pulp Fiction, I concentrated on the 'innovation in pace' aspect of the brief coupled with the diverse camera angles Tarantino used in the film.

I came up with some sketches that I was personally very pleased with, some not so and some i felt were entirely ropey! but using the ethos of last year, embrace mistakes I kept the ropey ones, the examples below are naturally, the ones I felt I had done well.

These images make up my sequential film screen shots part of the summer assignment we were given, I was really quite excited to get going with them as faces and characters make up alot of the work I do and are something else that i find massive amounts of inspiration in.

So, that's where I'm up to now and my next instalment should contain some of the animal spirit section I completely missed!