Smorgasboarder_23_Feb_2016-s

BESIDES BOARDS AND BRICKS, WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE
MEDIUM? HAVE YOU DONE MUCH TRADITIONAL ART
OUTPUT - PAINTINGS, PRINTS, ETC?
My favourite medium is acrylic paint and last year I took a
massive leap into the terrifying realm of painting “realistic”
portraits on canvas. The blank rectangular-ness of the canvas
was super scary at the start - with a surfboard I get a feel for
the shape of the board and it’s personality; using that to help
come up with the artwork for it. With a blank canvas or paper
you’ve got nothing… it’s just so… rectangular?
IS THERE A PARTICULAR PROCESS YOU FOLLOW WHEN
WORKING ON A PARTICULAR PIECE?
Apart from coming up with the concept as I described earlier,
the basic process is to work from the back to the front - starting
with the background and then progress through to the main
figure and finish with anything that may be in front of the main
figure.
WHAT’S THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN AN
ARTWORK FOR YOU (NO PRESSURE...)
Well apart from a bangin’ concept filled with bad puns and
vulgarity, the most important thing in any artwork is always the
eyes. Humans are always drawn to eyes and it doesn’t matter
whether you’re painting a human, horse, reverse mermaid or
anything else, if their eyes aren’t alive and compelling, neither
is the artwork. I’ll repaint the eyes 10 times if that’s what it
takes to get them right.
SUMMER 2016 | SMORGASBOARDER 43