IGI features
The Trials and Tribulations of an Irish Illustrator Abroad
Jul, 15, 2002It was a bitter winter morning in 1984 when I boarded the Larne to Stranraer ferry. With €100 in my pocket and an oversized drawing board tied to my back, I foolishly set out for the big smoke with no real plan other than to be a sci-fi/fantasy illustrator. It was a long journey as I couldn’t sit down; so I stood instead, frozen to the top deck outside, guiding the ship like a snowbound Frankenstein’s Monster, across the Irish Sea.
Running on dreams alone, near-starvation and homelessness soon followed my arrival in an Orwellian dank and dreary London. I sold myself into building site slavery for a pitiful weekly wage and by night I painted in the dim light of a lonely bed sit. My dreams of becoming the next Frank Frazetta looked bleakly unattainable indeed.
As usual, salvation came in the darkest hour (quite literally, as the electricity meter had run out an hour before!) It was in the form of a phone call from a honey-voiced art director who held in her hand a cheaply printed self-promotional postcard that I had mailed off months before, when my dreams were still kicking. Could I come and see them tomorrow to discuss covering their new sci-fi paperback? A quick flick through my blank diary and I had a date for nine o’clock the next morning at Orbit Books.
Smelling or cheap soap I walked into the boardroom and was treated as a human being for the first time since leaving the Emerald Isle. Dazzling them with confidence, I walked outside onto the Tottenham Court Road and into the first warm day of London’s long hot summer, contract in hand. Sitting on the corner of Oxford Street as the unseeing throng passed by, I stared at the contract with tears welling in my eyes. The fee was over six times my weekly slave wage. I was a free man.
Motto: Who dares wins!
I rented studio space with the first professional illustrators I had ever met. Taking a deep breath, I rolled up my sleeves and got down to the serious business of illustration.
One book jacket followed another. I now had an agent and rarely left the studio. As I was putting the finishing touches to one sci-fi piece, another manuscript would land on my desk. These were the glory days and I thought they would never end. Then, without fair warning, the country went into recession and the bottom fell out of the sci-fi market.
Motto: Don’t put all your illustrations in one basket!
Pounding the pavements with portfolio in hand, I walked passed the oppressed, dust covered Irish navvies digging up the road to the tune of the foreman swearing as if it was a national sport. Was this to be my fate again? I was determined not to make it so. Six poverty-stricken months followed as I put a new folio of ad type work together. I caught a train to Manchester and just as the chimes of doom were sounding, I secured one of the biggest agents in England and rented studio space with some of the giants of advertising illustration.
That such a variety of talent and personality existed in one room was incredible. In one corner we had the atomic-fuelled Jane Dodds -I remember Jane working frantically on a commission for the television soap Coronation Street, where she illustrated the entire street using only torn coloured paper and glue. She emerged from a cloud of confetti with a breathtaking masterpiece that now hangs in Granada Television Studios.
Next to Jane lurked the abominable Lee Crocker, whose workspace resembled a bomb site. Lee possessed giant hands with fingers that worked independently of his mind. Often a loud bang would come from Lee’s corner and I would see him rubbing his head or picking himself up off the floor. Yet, for all the calamity, Lee would create artworks so quirky I doubt if they could be produced in an orderly environment.
At the far end of the studio sat Dave Higginson, airbrush guru and Status Quo fan. Dave could talk for England and was rarely silent, sometimes inventing new terminology; ‘natural flappage’ was Dave’s answer to a student who pointed out a fluttering mask during an airbrush demonstration.
On my left was Graham Berry, the elder statesman of the studio. Graham had ridden the seventies illustration wave and drove to work in a red Porsche. I was in awe of Graham and I would have to mentally resist bowing when leaving his desk.
Facing me was the ever-smiling Tracy Fennel, who worked exclusively in watercolour. At one stage, we feared we were going to lose Tracy. Like so many before her, the studio rent was a heavy burden and the ad world was calling for slick, tight art which was the direct opposite of Tracy’s style. We proffered our advice to her, around the studio sofas and Tracy took it on the chin. With her last few pennies, she hopped on a return train to London to meet some publishing art directors. The next day she came back with a slew of magazine and book commissions, to great applause.
Motto: No one’s coming to help you; help yourself.
Next to Tracy sat Gary Bullock, whose profile in the yearly Art Book once read, ‘Gary works in many styles and enjoys tight briefs’. Gary could grow a full beard in an afternoon and had an electric razor mounted on his wall, in case he had to pop out and see a client.
The final character sat in the centre of the studio; a position befitting the King of Illustration. The mighty Steve Linell.
Let me take you back in time again to London’s West End. I can see my half-reflection in a cinema window staring back. A dust-covered youth in cement-caked boots. I’m studying the poster artwork for the film Merry Christmas Mr Laurence and puzzling over what road the illustrator took to find such a fantastic commission and how impressively it was completed. The biggest question of all was; how the hell do I get where he is? The artist, it turned out, was Steve. Steve’s speed and ingenuity were legendary and I learned more from him than I had from a thousand ‘how-to’ books. Enduring his endless puns was the only cost.
Once upon a time, an art director made an urgent call to Steve. A realistic illustration of a coffee mug stain was needed by the end of the day and there was only a budget of a few hundred pounds. ‘No problem’, said Steve. He sat for a minute contemplating a scrap of watercolour board. Then, with a quick slurp from his own ever-present coffee mug, he planted the wet bottom onto the art surface, creating a perfect stain! The client was amazed. It looked exactly like a coffee mug stain. Steve Linnell -genius at work.
Motto: The client doesn’t care how you do it. Just get it done!
The Studio was always filled with laughter and camaraderie. I admired these guys but it didn’t stop me ribbing them unmercifully when it was my turn. I learned from them and quickly became ‘A Man of Many Styles’ I was with my peers and a full-time illustrator at last.
The years sped by as I watched the vast advertising machine chewing up thousands of little illustrations; all forgotten save for a few fading copies, gathering dust in an
old ‘analogue’ portfolio. Optimistically, I moved back to London but found a rain-soaked city in decay. I decided to backpack through the sun-baked lands of Israel and Egypt, finding adventure and romance amidst the pyramids. Endless summers led me to sub-tropical Australia, which I now call home.
Australia turned out to be a big surprise after a diet of misleading Chips Rafferty movies. I was taken completely off guard when I decided to apply for a job as art director/studio manager in Brisbane’s glass-towered city.
The C.E.O. was impressed with the cut of my jib and led me into the studio to meet the underlings. To my horror, they were all sitting in front of Apple computers. All I could hear was air rushing through my head, carrying away the voice of my new employer who was telling me some stuff about me being responsible for data backup etc. I was sunk.
With shame, I confessed that I knew nothing about computers and left with my head down. I was now in Tracy Fennell’s boat and all that was left for me to do was to take it on the chin. I put on my big boy’s pants and went back to school, enrolling in a digital arts course at the local college.
The college campus was peopled by bright young things, taking their first steps in the big world. Still in my thirties, I felt young and fit but when I first entered the classroom, the students looked at me as if Grandpa Walton had just shuffled in. I sat in front of a dark computer screen, mortified while others clickity-clicked like crickets. Peter, the instructor, asked me if everything was okay and I had to tell him that I couldn’t turn the blasted thing on. However, just three short months later, I was bringing actual digital commissions into the classroom.
Peter threw out my original teaching programme as he too got caught up in the excitement of real-world projects with deadlines. The fear of the unknown was gone and I found I had a huge advantage over the other students in the form of my illustration experience. I had already won the hardest battle decades before. This was just a new toy to play with and it mimicked traditional media flawlessly. I was amazed at how easy it all was, in the end.
So here we are in the brave new digital era. What had once threatened to destroy us has become our saviour. We can now catalogue our original art and send the copies screaming down cables to the other side of the world before the local illustrators can get out of bed.
With this shiny new technology and the help of the Illustrators Guild of Ireland, the future looks very bright for Irish illustrators. There is no longer any need to leave your home town (or even get out of your pyjamas) to make a career overseas.
The palm trees are swaying gently in the warm breeze outside my digital studio, as I move pen across electronic tablet to begin a new painting. It’s a new fantasy piece for Penguin Books, New York and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Look out Frank, here I come!
Motto: Follow your dreams!
Patrick Jones is represented by:
carolenewman.com
artworksillustration.com
