IGI features
David Rooney Interview
Jul, 27, 2001
Successful Irish illustrator David Rooney has been creating concept driven scraperboard illustrations at home and across Europe for more than ten years. With up to 6 ICAD awards to his name he has also recently won the UK ‘Association of Illustrators’ Silver award for his ‘Lorna Doone’ book illustrations.
You have been a professional illustrator for some time now - how did you get started in illustration? and have you found that the demand for illustration has declined in recent years, particularly in Ireland?
When I graduated with a degree in Visual Communications from N.C.A.D in 1983, there was absolutely no work in Ireland, for anybody, so I just continued what I had been doing for the last year or so in college. Essentially, experimenting with fine art techniques, painting, collage, hot wax and burnt material. I also drew a lot, every night from life. My figure drawing improved enormously as a result [I had failed life drawing in 1st. year at college] and while it was not a plan as such, it meant that in later years I could draw realistic representations of people, poses and by extension most other things, without references. This faculty was to greatly speed up my working process in later years.
I remained in Dublin after college and for the first couple of years supported myself through painting, i.e. acrylic on canvas. These were representational paintings of local themes from around my home village of Eyrecourt (Co. Galway), the River Shannon and the town of Banagher where I had gone to school. In early 1986, I went around Dublin with a really mixed bag portfolio and no definite style but amazingly got work from Hotpress, the Sunday Tribune and educational bookwork from The O’Brien Press. Around that time, fellow illustrator Brian Fitzgerald told me about scraperboard and since then I’ve always had work to do.
So I suppose having survived and evolved in an 80’s Ireland with unemployment in the high teens, the current reduction in demand for illustration from design/advertising companies has not really worried me too much. The body of work I’ve produced over the past two years, which is now balanced more in favour of editorial/publishing, is a lot more satisfying, creatively.
Are design companies not using illustrators work as much as they used to?
The demand for illustration work changes and one has to move with it, definitely there is less demand from graphic designers but they now have the freedom and resources themselves to create interesting surfaces upon which to hang their type. Illustrators have to sell their idea-creating ability to win back this work. Design now tends to be incredibly time driven and clients want to see highly finished roughs which they know can be altered with the click of a mouse. The results can often be very formulaic; professional looking but lacking any emotional content, it can be hard to squeeze illustration into such an environment. I think for commercially driven work, it is better to be selective, have a couple of tuned-in clients and work with a small number of sympathetically minded designers/art directors rather than to try bending backwards to accommodate everybody. Actually, the same applies for editorial/publishing, or at least it seems like that for me.
How do you find working remotely with clients in other countries?
Just like here, you develop relationships over time, it has taken over three years but now almost 60% of my work comes from Germany, mostly editorial. The Germans are more demanding, but they will also be more likely to call after the job is delivered and give you some feedback, which is nice. I visit Germany a couple of times a year and have made good friends there through my work.
Apart from Germany, I do regular work for the OECD in Paris. The client there is an old friend of mine and Irish! In England for the past three years, I’ve worked with only one publisher: The Folio Society. They produce “editions of the world’s great literature, in a format worthy of its contents”, as they say in the brochure. The finished product really is beautiful and has a sense of permanence about it that is absent from editorial work. Again I think the key is working with a small number of people and developing a close working relationship with them no matter where they are.
Do you prefer to work on editorial illustrations for publication or do you find illustrating to a designers brief more interesting?
Editorial work is my personal work. Illustrating for Hot Press and the Irish Times the turmoil of the North, abortion referenda, emigration, recession and confessions leading to the eventual fall from grace of the Catholic Church and the emergence of Ireland.com have all been my subject matter.
Comparatively, art director/designer/commercially driven jobs are bound to be less involving, though the key is to try and get in early enough at the concept stage and find a subject matter that has some depth to it. The editorial illustration process for me is very immediate. For example, for over three years I have been doing a comment illustration in Friday’s Business Section of The Irish Times. The Illustration topic is usually decided on Thursday morning and it has to be delivered by Thursday evening, so the first idea I think of is usually what ends up in the paper. It is great fun trying to get something engaging out of for instance, this weeks story of the U.S. Federal Reserve cutting its interest rates to stave off recession and bearish behaviour thereby aiding the Nasdaq.
Is an Agent essential to get illustration work? Are there pro’s and con’s?
Abroad, yes. You just cannot get around enough even with e-mail. It is often the personal rapport the agent has with the client that will tend to swing a job your way. They want to know and be made feel confident that you can deliver. Downside? This costs you 30% but the cheques arrive on time and there is no chasing money.
Do ideas play an important role in your work as opposed to style or technique? Is scraperboard a time consuming technique?
The idea is everything and although the way I work is very traditional and the surface is very worked, unless there is a decent idea to hang it on, it just will not work. However, sometimes a novel point of view can make a mediocre concept shine and this is often nesscessary if the material is shallow. I still really enjoy “the scratching process” as it is always a surprise how the images emerge from the blackness. I scrape away to reveal the defining line much in the way that a sculpture frees a figure from the rock!
What is your opinion on the rise of stock illustration? (especially on the internet) Many key illustrators, such as Brad Holland, have complained that they denigrate the value of an illustrators work - with illustrators making less money and eliminating the need for original, commissioned artwork?
I have not given it much thought, to be honest but I feel you can usually tell when stock is used as it often has an inappropriate feel about the way the text has been interpreted. I do not feel the threat. Is that naivety on my part?
Who are some of your illustration influences?
I do not tend to look at illustration books for inspiration and when I do slog through them I tend to find it somehow disorientating. I love travelling to visit art galleries and museums and every time I am in London I seem to come away invigourated by the work I have seen. The recent Rembrandt, the printmaker show at The British Museum topped off by Norman Foster’s new glass dome covered Great Court did the trick. A few months back Picassos permanent print collection in Muenster, Germany, similarly refuelled me for another couple of months scratching and scraping.
Do you have your own website?
Until recently I did not, but I do now (albeit shared), thanks to Illustratorsireland ! I now intend to create my own one and would like to archive the past fifteen years work.
Do you prefer to stick to traditional illustration methods or have you started to use technology to produce works?
In Germany I have to deliver digitally, so I had to embrace the Mac and now I love it. Though all black line work is still scraperboard, colouring is now done in Photoshop.
Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions as regards your illustration work?
I would like to build on recent success in England. ‘Lorna Doone’ which I illustrated for The Folio Society has just won silver, books category, at The Association of Illustrators - Best of British Illustration Show. On the strength of this, I am working on finding the right agent and building an editorial base in the UK. Hoping to achieve a similar set of relationships to what I have in Germany. The Sterling/Punt differential would almost cover the agent’s cut!
What are your plans for the future?
Plans for the future…. avoid fireworks, I almost lost my left eye last New Years Eve at a party in Arnhem.
Visit David Rooney’s work online at davidrooney.com
