Art and Things

Colin Newman is an illustrator based in Brighton. He did most of his growing up in Luton, a town that he claims has “as much charm as a rubber bullet”.  He studied art at Dunstable College until he left early to be a stand-up comedian with a mate called Lord Wombat. Much, much later he moved to Brighton with his girlfriend and studied multimedia design and digital arts at Brighton Uni. He graduated in June 2008. He’s sharper than a sharpie (oh god - Ed) and makes stuff that looks insanely cool.

Art and Things: Hello, Colin! What materials and methods do you like to use?

Colin Newman: If I’m out and about I’ll scrawl in a little book with black ink or pencils, but ultimately everything ends up scanned, coloured and textured in photoshop. Just recently I’ve started drawing straight into the program with a tablet and pen tool. I need to work fast to keep the intensity up, and working digitally allows me to use any material I can think of in an environment with no permanent consequences. If I’m shitting it all up the wall, I can ctrl-z until the work is…un-fucked. Pieces come together very quickly and can be totally re-worked later on. Speed. It’s about speed.

How do you think you’ve developed differently as an artist due to formal study?

You know something? I‘ve struggled with the word artist for years. I like art – but I’ve had mixed experiences speaking with people that call themselves artists. I trained as a designer. I was going to design websites, but art kind of got in the way on my third year. I was very lucky to be amongst some genuinely talented classmates and very expressive and warm tutors and guest speakers. I learned that images are supposed to speak in a language you can understand. I learned to not be frightened of taking a design idea, and the rules that go with it, and go absolutely bananas and as far as possible with it. Rip it off its moorings and turn it into something bigger. I’ve got some grand concepts that I want to explore, but aren’t ready to show just yet. I’d like to collaborate with different kinds of creative people to breathe life into them.

We’re going to give you a very large sum of money to buy one piece of artist’s gear. What do you want? (not really)

I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me say I want a Mac. You Mac owners are all the same. No seriously, I need a computer with some serious guts. And a graphics tablet the size of a football pitch. With a pen tool like fucking missile. [One iMac. And yes, as of last week every single one of us owns at least one Mac computer - Ed]

Read anything good recently?

Pfffft. I’m terrible with novels. I get about halfway through, then the main character will do something I deem entirely rubbish. I once threw a book out the window because I objected to the protagonist falling in love. I like sad stories with bitter endings. The Wasp Factory is one of my favourites. As is The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Tell us a bit about Milk and Sugar.

Milk & Sugar is a little bi-weekly art project that myself and my mate Kate Kamikaze run on Facebook. Anyone can join the group, and it doesn’t matter what your artistic discipline or background is. We just give you a title, and you produce some work. The idea is to get people constantly bashing out work and thinking creatively. It’s been pretty successful with all kinds of crazy submissions. My mate John Forth tends to submit compelling and frightening short stories, several people have written haiku, we’ve got photographs, paintings, sculptures, all sorts. I’m really excited to see what people come up with, and I get a lot out of asking them about how they make their pieces. Talking about stuff makes me love what I do more.

What’ve been your most challenging projects so far?

I made an illustrated book that I submitted to the D&AD student awards thing in my third year at Uni called ‘TRAUMATRON: He Came From The Internet’. It was challenging in terms of the technical side and the research. It was a child-like storybook about my time as a forum moderator on a terribly trendy alternative modelling site with a thriving and very vocal user community. I had a very strange time of it keeping site users and models in a co-habitable virtual environment. It was an especially difficult piece of work to put together because trying to explain everything that happened to someone who wasn’t part of that web community was tricky at best. So I drew lots of weird pictures to try and illustrate what it was like. I also had to face up to the fact that I am a bastard psychotic. Or was.

Last album you bought?

Bought? With money? Do people still do that? Hahaha. Last one I bought was the Ralfe Band’s ‘Swords’, which is jaunty and sad and silly all at the same time. Very charming. That was ages ago though. Last album I obtained was the score for the Watchmen movie. I’m really into scores at the minute. The one for Dark Knight is especially compelling. Predictably, I listen to music while I work. I generally stick something scary on and scribble away for a few minutes, then my shuffle function will be betray me horribly by playing the Banana Splits theme tune while I’m drawing a vomiting nightmare beast. Or something.

What’re you most proud of?

In terms of my achievements? I’ve learned a lot. University was absolutely vital. Being with those great people and listening to people that are out there doing crazy things transformed me from faintly talented loser into a passionate artist.

I’m proud of myself for embracing organised education when previously in my life my supreme teenage arrogance wouldn’t let me stick with it. I’d do it all again in an instant.?

What’d be your perfect job as an illustrator?

I want to turn people’s stories into videogames or animated movies. I want to create people, monsters, and worlds. So, yeah. Concept artist for videogames would be lovely. On a more personal level, I’d like to get into performance again, and design costumes, and sets for my own show. My fiancée Nicola (better known as Esmeralda Underwood on the burlesque circuit) and I were working on a piece of cabaret-theatre which has gone on the back burner until after we’re married and a bit more settled.

What environment do you like to be in when you draw?

I work from home. I live in a basement flat with a tempestuous and beautiful young woman, and two cats. One is a haughty little French duke; the other is a delirious cretin. An anachronistic mixture of rapidly aging technology and antique curiosities surrounds me. There’s an Edwardian wooden leg standing up in my fireplace with a bunch of dead roses sticking out of the top of it (to cheer it up!). Some skulls, an old doctors kit, a divers helmet and a wonky taxidermied Magpie imaginatively christened Mr. Feathers flank it. There are pictures of dead celebrities on the walls, amongst Venetian and Balinese masks.

I sit here in the gloom and I listen to horrible music, think horrible thoughts, and make horrible pictures. I’m like the Vincent Price of graphic design. Hahaha!

What inspires you in general?

Other than dead celebrities and sad old things I find in flea markets, I really love videogames. I get a lot out of steering a character through a story and having encounters with other characters or players. I love that there’s people out there making whole virtual worlds for me to be blithely dysfunctional in. For example, I was playing Oblivion, that huge action RPG and all in the space of an afternoon I’d become trained as an assassin, made a load of assassin friends, ran around the country murdering people for money then I turned on my friends and murdered them all for their flashy possessions and claimed their underground HQ for my own.

I like stories – but I want to be in them. Movies and theatre and books are great and I love them, but…I can’t control them! Videogames inspire me in many ways, from the design work to the story and how it all works to form a complete experience. It’s fascinating. It’s real magic.

Colin blogs over at TRAUMATRON.COM and you can look into Milk and Sugar here.