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Spraygraphic Interview with Artist Peter James Field
By Spraygraphic | May 19, 2008
Spraygraphic’s Chuck b. interviews Artist and Illustrator Peter James Field about his art-making process, new works, and favorite artists.
Spraygraphic Interview with Peter James Field
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
PJF: I’m an artist and illustrator. I make figurative 2-D artwork for myself, as well as for magazine and book publishers. I’ve got a website which, also contains my visual diary – I’ve been updating it monthly for the past 4 years and its a bit of an obsession…
Illustration and art has been my full time job since 2005. Before then I spent some time teaching English in rural Japan, and before then I was studying art history at college.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
PJF: I live in Poole, a quiet little town on the south coast of England. Later this year I’ll be moving to Brighton a (less quiet) city, also on the south coast. I like to be near the sea.
SG: What mediums do you work with?
PJF: Drawing pencil, color pencil and acrylic paint – with a bit of occasional digital help.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
PJF: Research is important so, depending on what I’m planning to draw, I take a lot of photos and spend time looking through magazines and books for inspiring source materials. Then I draw things out in pencil. I often trace and re-trace the drawings on the lightbox (sometimes dozens of times over) to make sure they’re exactly how I want them. Only then do I add color. The sketching process can take as long as (or often longer than) the final artwork stage. I’m always trying to refine the image and cut out any visual noise.
I’m a bit of a control freak so I tend to deal with clean lines, defined details etc. I’m never up to my elbows in charcoal dust or turps, which I sometimes think is a shame… When I move to my new studio I’d definitely like to do some more messy experiments.
Since a lot of my work is for print, the final stage in my working process is scanning and turning the drawings into digital files. I’ve even been known to create whole artworks on screen from lots of smaller drawn elements.
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
PJF: In the short term I’ll have a quick break and go for a walk.
Sometimes, though, mental blocks can persist and they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe you need to feel "inspired" somehow to produce good work, so you wait and wait and wait… after a while you lose confidence and it becomes harder to re-approach the work. I find the best thing for this is to force myself to keep drawing and producing work. Inspiration needs to be actively worked at.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
PJF: I like looking for things of unusual beauty that are easily ignored. At the moment I’m into drawing sequences of things that appear "the same yet different". A current favorite is drain covers in the street. Once you start looking closely you realize there is an infinity of different lattice shaped patterns on these things. I’ve begun a process of drawing them and grouping the drawings together as a sort of typological sequence. In doing so you appreciate the beauty - they’re like little urban abstracts.
I had a similar obsession last year for plastic pill packets. As objects to draw they’re brilliant – each packet is designed slightly differently, and when you press out the pills they crumple and catch the light in different and unique ways. I know it’s a bit self indulgent but… thats kind of the point.
SG: How did you get into being an freelance artist for companies like Wallpaper , Stranger Magazine , and FHM ?
PJF: I put together a portfolio of work and then began to take it round the art directors of these magazines. I sent mailouts to all the British magazines that commission illustration, and then followed up these mailers with cold calls. I got some appointments with them and, gradually, started to win some assignments. More recently I have also signed with an agent ZeegenRush who market me worldwide.
SG: What kind of deadlines do you work with when producing this kind of work?
PJF: There’s never enough time. Editorial deadlines can be anything from a few hours (for a daily newspaper) to a day or so (for a weekly mag) to a week (for a monthly mag). Sometimes I have had to deliver seven or eight images in a day – very stressful at times!
SG: Do the companies come back to you and say "change this" or "change that?"
PJF: The way it works is that I submit an initial rough sketch, then the clients come back with comments and requests for changes. Sketches go back and forth over e-mail and often go through several stages. Only when we’re both happy do I start to add color. Most clients are understandably fairly picky, so it’s rare to have a job where there are no changes.
SG: How much are you willing to change? Is there some kind of negotiation process you go through?
PJF: In my illustration work I am basically a hired pencil, so I have to be very flexible – or I won’t pick up the work. Its totally different from "fine art" work, in the sense that one can’t afford to be over-precious about it – it’s a product to be sold. Having said that, I don’t view it as any less creative than fine art – its just art – albeit against a different set of challenges. Often commercial work forces me into refreshing ways of looking and seeing, so I relish the process. I always try and remind myself, too, that all the great artists from Michelangelo to Picasso worked in their turn to fairly strict commissions and deadlines.
Normally (because the client is paying the money) I am willing to change anything and everything, but only at the rough sketch stage. If the client wants big changes to the final artwork, this is not so cool, and I will try and negotiate more money for this!
Mostly the changes to sketches are fairly cosmetic, but I suppose there are certain things I wouldn’t be willing to change. For example if I was asked to work in a completely different style/medium, or to illustrate something morally/politically offensive. This has never happened to me and I hope it never will. The art directors I deal with are very experienced commissioners and, when they come to me, they respect my integrity and know what they are getting.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
PJF: It’s been seen in all sorts of British magazines – such as Time Out London , Wallpaper, Mens Health , The Financial Times , Elle Decoration , Computer Arts and Dazed and Confused .
In terms of exhibitions – I had a small solo show in Brighton in 2006. Then, in 2007 together with five other young illustrators, I participated in a group show at Nolia’s , a London gallery.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
PJF: I hope to exhibit again both in Brighton and London later in 2008. I have also been working with a team of illustrators on a new Childrens Illustrated Bible for a major book publishers, to be released globally at the end of the year.
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
PJF: As a music fan, I’d love to get the chance to do some album artwork for a really great artist. Not necessarily a really well known one, but someone I truly admire like Lisa Germano .
I’d also like to do some documentary assignments… I’d love to do some human interest stories in unusual locations overseas – not so much documenting "events" (as a photojournalist might) but reacting to and reflecting the minutiae of everyday life in a different culture.
SG: What is your favorite color?
PJF: Good question, I have to think a lot about colors, because a lot of my artwork is reproduced in magazines. In that sense, my artwork is not "finished" on paper, it only becomes complete through a process of scanning, e-mailing and commercial printing. Some colors react very well to this process. Blue is a very reliable color, so its probably my favorite! Red is very reliable as well. The nightmare colors for me are yellow and purple. They never look as nice when they come out of a commercial press…
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
PJF: I have extremely varied tastes and my favorite artist seems to change from week to week. At the moment, for example, I’m in love with the work of a Scottish painter called Joan Eardley .
She was active in the 1950s and 60s. She was quite poor and lived in the Scottish city of Glasgow – which at that time was one of the poorest cities of the British Isles. There is so much passion and raw feeling in her work. I saw some of her paintings on show last year – and I could literally taste the passion and energy. I stood there thunderstruck in the gallery like an idiot with tears running down my face. It’s been a long time since I felt such a close emotional reaction to an artist I’d never even heard of before!
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
PJF: I’m addicted to ArtWorld magazine … its the only thing I buy without fail. I’m reading trashy crime novels to help me get to sleep at night – at the moment I can’t seem to manage anything too highbrow!
SG: Ever do a self portrait? Where is it now?
PJF: I regularly do self portraits as part of my visual diary… I must have done hundreds in my lifetime. Its partly because I find it difficult to get people to sit for me, but its also because I like to examine myself at different moments, I find it a good way to analyze myself and calm myself down. I’ve kept all the portraits in my studio.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
PJF: I live by the sea, and I go there as much as I can for peace and quiet, and to remind myself how insignificant I and all my worries are…
SG: Any final words of advice?
PJF: OK well here’s a story I once heard. Maybe it’s not true but it tells you something (I think) about how to make good art.
In the 1950s Andy Warhol was just a successful graphic artist, but he wanted to break into the fine art world. He approached a dealer friend of his for advice. "I want to be an artist but I don’t know what to paint". The dealer said "just paint what you love." Andy said – "but I only really love my mother". The dealer said that wasn’t a very new idea – lots of artists had already done that. "What do you love most, apart from your mother?" he asked. Andy thought for a moment… "Just money".
So he went away and did his earliest Pop Art screenprints of dollar bills… The show was a big success and it sold out. Then Andy went back to the dealer in a panic. "I have to do a new show and I’ve got no more ideas". The dealer told him to paint the thing he most loved – after his mother and money. Andy was stuck. "There’s nothing else… the only thing I couldn’t live without is a bowl of Campbells soup every lunchtime!" So the dealer advised him to paint that – and hey presto, he had massive success and never looked back.
So the moral is basically; stick to what you know and love and you can’t go too far wrong. The thing that might seem pretty kooky to you is exactly the thing you have to offer that no-one else has… the real trick is finding your uniqueness and putting it across in such a way as to engage others – needless to say easier said than done…
ART: 1. Drain Cover, 2. Ipod-Self Portrait, 3. Level Cross, 4, Management Today, 5. Pills, 6. Rainy, 7. Self Portrait,
8. Dog’s Dinner-editorial pic for Time Out Magazine, 9. Tourist, 10. Prey
Topics: Artist Interviews, International-Art, Pencil Drawings |
