Who are some artists and/or illustrators who have influenced your work? How and why?
The greatest influences strike you when you’re very young. My mother was an early influence because she’d been to art school, and worked briefly as a textile designer before getting married. Having an artist in the family demystified the art world and made an art career seem like a tangible thing. She also had a few art books and magazines from her college days so I was aware of fine art from a very early age. Later influences were the covers I was seeing on bookshelves and in record-shop windows in the 1970s; the book covers being created by Chris Foss, Bruce Pennington, and Bob Haberfield weren’t things I tried to imitate myself but the combination of this type of art with a fantasy, horror, or science fiction story sparked my desire to aim for doing something similar myself. Album covers were equally intriguing even if the music they packaged wasn’t always very good. I urged my parents to buy me Roger Dean’s first art book, Views, then began collecting the books published by his Dragon’s Dream company. The album art of Roger Dean and the surreal and often enigmatic record sleeves created by Hipgnosis made music seem like another area in which it might be good to work.
The final influence from this period was Heavy Metal, a magazine, which, from the late ’70s, was reprinting in English the French comic strips from Métal Hurlant by Moebius, Druillet, Bilal, and many others. I stopped reading comics when I was about twelve after trying to get interested in US superhero comics; I didn’t like the art and thought the stories were ridiculous compared to the written science fiction I was reading. Heavy Metal had superior artwork and the stories were often a lot more interesting. This made me realize that comics could still be a viable medium for an artist who didn’t want to draw in the American style.
What media do you use? Do you think any media are better, or can shape, how speculative elements are depicted in a work?
I work entirely digitally today, using a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and a Wacom tablet. I still do sketches on paper from time to time since this is a good way to quickly work out ideas, but I only use physical media if I require a very specific effect, like an ink wash or something. With Illustrator, I like the precision it delivers, something I often tried to achieve with ink drawing.
The great advantage of digital media is its flexibility. You can refine a piece of work or try a number of variations without destroying the early stages of the piece. With physical media, you often have to live with the single thing you’re creating, flaws and all. With digital art you can also use bits and pieces from all over the place, combining photo sources with original illustration to create a seamless hybrid. This is useful for imaginative work when you’re often trying to create things that haven’t been seen before. I’m not the only illustrator who used to hoard photos ripped from magazines to use as drawing reference. There’s no need for this today when the internet gives access to images of every kind.
The disadvantage of digital art is that everyone is aware of its flexibility, so you might be asked to change something you were perfectly happy with simply because an editor or art director knows that changes can be made.
How has the field been changing in the past ten years?
The most obvious change is that you have an entire generation—maybe two generations—for whom digital art isn’t a new thing at all but is the medium they grew up with. This means the standard of work from talented people is now very high; the refined finish that digital art offers has raised the bar enormously. People are also educating themselves much more, via YouTube tutorials or following artists who like to show the process stages of their work.
Another development is the visibility of artists from all over the world. The internet gives people access to an international audience that in the past would have only been available to the very successful.
What have been some challenges for you as a working artist? What have been some of your triumphs and joys?
The main challenge has always been to stay busy (and employed!) while working in the area that excites me the most. If you work freelance you often have to take whatever job comes your way; some jobs are inevitably more interesting and better suited to your abilities than others. You also have to be prepared for working relationships to run their course: publishers change their line of books or close down altogether; editors and art directors leave their jobs and leave your commissions in limbo as a result, and so on. This lack of a stable environment causes other problems since it compels you to say “yes” to whatever work that comes along, with the result that you may find yourself having to juggle two or three jobs with short deadlines simultaneously.
On the upside, it’s always good to be earning your living doing something you enjoy, and I feel very fortunate to be in this position even though I’m always complaining that I don’t get paid enough. I’ve been additionally fortunate in having the opportunity to work with people whose books or music I’ve admired from afar. I’m often critical of the album covers I created for Hawkwind in the early 1980s but that opportunity was a very lucky break for a nineteen-year-old, and it made me feel that I’d made the right decision two years earlier when parents and teachers were telling me I was going to fail utterly if I didn’t go to art school.
I also feel lucky to have won the World Fantasy Award for best artist since I don’t work exclusively in fantasy and SF and don’t always feel very visible there. I’ve tended to dismiss the genre awards in the past for being minor things that are very US-oriented, despite their “world” labels. I changed my tune a little when I looked back over the previous World Fantasy art winners to see artists like Roger Dean and Moebius in the list. I don’t regard myself as being on their level at all but it’s good company to be in.
What is some advice you could pass along to people just starting out in the field? How can we work to support each other?
I’m usually wary of giving advice since everybody’s circumstances and opportunities differ, and some of the things that worked out well for me won’t work for others at all. I didn’t go to art school for a variety of reasons but not everyone has the self-confidence (misguided or otherwise) that I had when I was seventeen. That said, it’s not necessary to fret about qualifications if you’re aiming for an illustration career. Nobody has ever asked me about my education in a job context, and I’ve never heard of any other illustrator being asked the same. When it comes to commissions, the thing that counts is the quality of your work.
Beyond education, two general things are of lasting importance: visibility and contactability. Is your work easy for people to see, and are you easy to contact if somebody takes an interest? Making your work visible is relatively easy today thanks to social media, so this isn’t too much of a hurdle. I’d caution people about becoming wedded to a single platform, however. All the popular social media outlets have only been around for a short time and the less successful ones (in a business sense) like Tumblr keep getting sold to new owners. Some of these platforms may no longer be around in another ten years, so you have to regard all internet outlets as useful in the short term but not as a single place to devote all your time and energy.
The hazards of social media leads to the second point about contactability, and for the long term I’d recommend having your own website. Setting up a website may seem a daunting thing compared to setting up a profile on a free social outlet; websites cost money (a small amount but it still needs paying for) and require a degree of technical skill to set up and maintain. But it’s worth the initial effort for the benefit of having your own online portfolio available to the world. Here you can have your contact details easily available and post all your work in whatever manner you find appropriate. You can still post the same work to social media, just don’t regard the latter as the only outlet in the world simply because everyone you know seems to be there. Your friends may all be there but commissioning editors or art directors may not be. If someone sees a sample of your work in a web search, are you and your contact details easy to find without them having to sign up to a site or click through login notices and other obstacles before they even locate your name?
This is getting overextended so I’ll make a final note that going to conventions is a good way to get your work seen and also meet people who may want to use it somewhere. I’m a total introvert so I dislike conventions, even though I used to force myself to go to them. Convention attendance can also involve considerable expense so you have to be prepared to spend a lot of money and maybe have nothing to show for it at the end. But it’s a very good way to meet writers, editors, and art directors. And other artists, of course.
John Coulthart
John Coulthart is a World Fantasy Award-winning artist, designer and writer. His illustration and design work includes commissions for Abrams, Angry Robot, Granta, Harper Collins, Savoy Books, Tachyon, Tor and many others. His work as a comic artist is contained in two books: The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions, a collection of Lovecraft adaptations which features a unique collaboration with Alan Moore; and Lord Horror: Reverbstorm, a graphic novel written by David Britton. His work as a writer includes essays and reviews for Andre Deutsch, Arrow Academy, Communication Arts, and Eye Magazine.
Website: www.johncoulthart.com