Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3

by Carnell, Thom

  When you find yourself in a situation of having to call upon the ability to force it, does it sour you on the piece at all or do you just accept it?

  No, I don’t think so because then it’s another challenge. It’s like, "Ok, can you pull it off?" [laughs] I’m not the best illustrator in the world, I wish I was, but...

  You’re no hack.

  No. I have a certain level of confidence, but like I said, "Two dogs a year and that’s it."

  Who are the people out there whose work, when they release something, you just have to see it and have to pick up a copy of it? Who are the artists that you think are doing dynamite stuff?

  There’s so many. Who lately am I really excited about? A guy that I studied under by the name of Steve Huston. He’s a very traditional painter and he has an opening coming up next week that I am so excited about seeing.

  In Los Angeles?

  Yeah, here in Pasadena. There is another guy, Richard Bunkall, that I studied under that I was so excited to see the group of paintings. He’s an awesome painter. He’s the teacher whose class I met Thom Ang in. I look at him and am just amazed. Henna Hšch, I really enjoy looking at her stuff. It’s hard to think. Eric Dinyer I really like a lot. Matt Mahurin I love. Greg Spalenka never disappoints me. Anybody good... It’s different every week. Sometimes I’m into 3D stuff, sometimes I’m into photography, sometimes I’m into line drawing or Suni painting. There’s such a variety and it’s because I’m trying to increase my vocabulary. I feel like a kid, like a baby that’s learning to speak. And there’s these adults around me and they’re artists who are creating work. I look at them and I see the words that they use to communicate the ideas that they have in their head. I take a word from somebody and a word from somebody else and try to see how that word fits into the idea that’s in my head and the vocabulary that I’m creating to express the things that are in my heart. So, that’s how I look at the whole thing. Anybody who’s good will do that with other artists and with nature and with their whole life’s experience.

  Isn’t that what it means to be an Artist? Down the road, what do you see as a dream project for you? Would it be a coffee table collection of your art?

  That would be cool. Hopefully, I’ll have a long career and I’ll be able to cross over into film and video. I took a film class in school. I took it fifth term and, if I had taken it second term, I wouldn’t be an illustrator today. I’d be a filmmaker. But, that film class taught me more about illustration than any single class I took at Art Center which was really interesting, because it had nothing to do with illustration, supposedly. It was a complete elective. As a matter of fact, I had to pull some strings to get in that class. They just don’t like illustrators in the film department.

  What do they know?

  Yeah, what do they know? I’m even talking to some production companies now here in L.A. about directing rock video projects. So, that’s exciting. To get into that market is on my Ten Year Goal List and [continue to] be able to create still images. There are personal paintings I’d like to do as well, but they’re not really Fine Art as Fine Art is defined really these days. They’re personal paintings. They’re paintings that I’d like to do. As this vocabulary I’m building [grows], I have ideas in my head and heart that I’d like to express and all this experience of doing illustration and working with all these cool, cool projects. In my head, I’m creating these images and this environment that I’m going to describe to someone on a personal level at some point in the future. Maybe I’m too greedy? Either that or ADD...

  Naaw... You’re never too greedy. That’s how I look at it.

  I want it all!

  I don’t think that’s unreasonable, you know? With the amount of time that someone like yourself has put into your craft, now is the time to be compensated and to be able to play. I don’t think wanting it all is greedy at all.

  Yeah...

  Yeah...what the heck do I know? [laughs]

  It’s all that guilt. If something good happens you go, "Oh, something bad is going to happen."

  So, what are you working on now and what can people look for?

  More X-Files book covers. I’m doing the covers of some novelizations for the young adult market. I’ve done almost twenty and I still have many more to do, at least another eight. I’m sure the series will continue because it’s my understanding that they’re selling very well. It’s the [book] lines from Harper Trophy and eighteen are finished, maybe twenty four are finished. I can’t even remember. I’ve done right around sixty pieces just for X-Files alone over the past several years. I hope that will continue to happen and I have every expectation that it will. I just started a new gig with a new client that I think will be really interesting considering where they want to take the project and that is some R.L. Stine stuff for the Fear Street young adult market. I don’t know why I’m ending up with these young adult markets. I think my work is very adult, but the Y.A. market is really liking me. I think that’s because kids who read in the Y.A. Market want to feel like they’re adults so, the artwork that they put on the cover [the publishers] want to bridge that gap. It’s got to be hip enough so the kids will like it, but it’s got to be sophisticated enough so that they kids will say, "Hey, I’m an adult now." So, they’re doing a series called Fear Street with R. L. Stine which will be an ongoing project. I’m excited about the possibilities there. I actually finished two sketches for them today on two books that will be coming out. I’m real excited about the piece I did for your cover.

  It’s absolutely beautiful.

  That was so much fun to do. It was almost cathartic. [laughs] I’ve been thinking about that piece for a while.

  I couldn’t even describe to you what our reaction was when we opened the file. Catia was just sitting there, hands over her mouth. So, these Y.A. Books are filling up your plate right now?

  Yeah, plus, again, I’m talking with some production companies here in L.A. and they just might say, "You know what? You suck..." Actually, this one company tracked me down after this article was done on my work in Design Graphics Magazine. They saw that and called information and got my number. They said, "We have to talk to you." So, that’s a nice possibility there. I’ve been doing a lot of computer game packaging and advertising lately.

  I saw Phantasmagoria 2...

  I’ve done like, maybe, eight more boxes since then, different projects including advertisements. I got asked to do a lot of medieval slaughter pictures lately. [laughs] In the spirit of trying to be experimental, if I get a client who says, "Well, the game is called Die by the Sword and it’s a medieval fantasy where you have this sword, and you’re chopping up these creatures and there’s Orcs and dwarves" or whatever, I don’t try to plug that into what I’ve done for X-Files. I try to say, "All right, how can I take this project and give it its own voice and let it filter through me?" Hopefully, every little piece I’m doing kind of has its own personality. I try to give it that, it might not. I probably am just repeating myself over and over and boring everybody to tears, but I try to think that way. I think, "How can I give this thing its own life?"

  That surprises me that someone doing a medieval "hack and slash" game would come to you and ask for this beautiful image.

  Well, they didn’t say beautiful. I try to make it beautiful, but it ended up being this nasty looking Frazetta-type guy with this helmet on. I wanted to go photographic with it because I thought, "Hey, there’s no photographic medieval-type stuff out there." So, I went down to the guy who made the sword for Conan the Barbarian. He’s got a shop out here in Glendale. The guy’s awesome! He’s back in the back with a grinder making axes and swords and stuff like that and he’s got chainmail you can rent. So, I rented a bunch of armor, chainmail, swords and stuff. I got all my friends posing for me with stuff out in the front yard. I put them on the computer and built this medieval arena that they’re in. I put fire coming up from lava pits that they were standing in. It was a lot of fun. I’m surprised that they picked me for
that gig because I didn’t have any sword fighting, medieval type stuff, even though I enjoyed reading the John Carter of Mars and Conan series when I was a kid.

  I’m imagining that the majority of your spare time is focused on your son.

  Yep, it is. He’s number one. That’s the one cool, cool thing about me being an artist, I can be here for him any time he needs me, day or night. We’ll have to run errands like anybody else would, but my studio is right here in my home. We play games together, we talk, we paint, we draw together.

  What does he think of your art? Is it just part of the standard operating procedure that dad does this cool stuff?

  He has a real warped sense probably of what work is and what it’s like to go to work. [laughs] Most kid, their dad’s gone, running out the door to catch the bus or hopping in the truck as in my case when I was growing up. Me, he sees me drawing this weird stuff and these weird creatures and he loves it. He’s into scary stuff right now. He says, "I don’t like happy stuff. I like scary stuff." I don’t want him to be like I was with music in high school. I missed out on a lot of just fun pop stuff because I was too worked up about, "Hey, they really have to be really proficient musically. I don’t want them playing with synthesizers because that’s not real," which is bull now. I love everything now. I say to him, "Happy is good, too. Sometimes it’s fun to draw happy stuff. You just draw whatever you want." So, he draws whatever he wants. I’m concerned because he’s in kindergarten now and I know he’s doing some scary-assed stuff for his teachers and I know that they’re going to be freaking out.

  "We need to watch the Nielsen boy..."

  "Have you seen the latest creation by young Mister Nielsen?"

  I think it may be different because you’re in L.A.

  Maybe, but I’m telling you, the guy freaks me out. I was doing this drawing on my desk, and it was just a sketch, but it was the start of this guy’s face and I had blocked in where the shadows for his eyes go and his nose and his mouth and the phone rang. I got up to answer it and he just took over. I didn’t even know. He started drawing these gnarly teeth and these mouths in the eye sockets and the teeth had fingernails on them. He was trippin’. I try not to rent "R" rated movies for him to watch. I try to keep things real normal for him. He watches Disney animation just like everybody else’s normal kid. I try to keep it real age appropriate, but it’s hard because he sees the stuff that I do and it’s not age appropriate for him. I think he has a different concept of what it means. He sees its production. He sees that it’s fake. He sees how it’s built. For instance, I don’t spank him. For me, I don’t feel good about it. I don’t think it really teaches him anything except to solve his problems by smacking somebody. So, he knows that violence is not the answer. Yet, a lot of the work I do is really, if it’s not violent, it has violent undertones. I took karate as a kid growing up and I think getting knocked around a little bit does a body good because you’re not afraid to get popped upside the head once you’ve been popped upside the head. As long as you don’t resort to that as a first line of defense. He sees these pictures of somebody getting his head lopped off or something. I try not to show him, but once in a while he’s going to see it because that’s just the trade-off I have to make. And that could all change as he gets older, because he’s still only five. I think he’ll be completely disinterested in a whole lot of it by the time he’s older. He’s behind the curtain and he sees all the strings.

  See, that was really important for us with our kids growing up. We thought to show them certain film, but we also discussed, "Ok...that monster is a rod puppet or Special Effect." So, they grew up being hip to that. We just went to see Peacemaker and there’s some moments of real violence there and they’re savvy enough to know that they "really didn’t blow up that building" kind of a thing.

  They also know that it’s all done to further a story. I think people who are kind of tweaked like us understand that it’s fake. I think that if we really thought it was for real, I don’t think that we’d do it. I have friends who will come over and say, "Hey, look at this vein in my arm" and they’ll start playing with it. I’ll get freaked out and say, "I can’t look at that." I’ll get sick. They’ll say, "What? You’re drawing guts all day." I’m saying, "Yeah, but that’s fake! You got a vein and it’s gross." When it’s all very clean and neat and fake, I can deal with it, but the real stuff, don’t make me look at it.

  Joe Jusko

  Code of the Badge

  Discipline of the Brush

  The first thing you notice is the fluid motion of the creature’s painting onto the canvas. You can almost see the animals which stand majestically against a lush jungle backdrop breathe. The flesh of the men and women portrayed look as if they’d been plucked from the most feverish dreams of Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not since the great Frank Frazetta has a painter been able to not only capture the fantasy world of these authors, but add a sense of movement which most artists can only dream about. His touch is deft, his style uncontested. He is an artist whose time is only now coming to blossom. With his latest Harris Comics release, Vampirella: Blood Lust, his impact on the serial art field has come to a full fruition. Bringing his formidable background in law enforcement into play, Jusko is someone to watch. He puts a unique spin on the ball by utilizing an eye that has seen drama and tragedy. He, and his art, will bring you to other worlds, escort you into the dark realms of the heart, for he is an elusive kind of artist. He is a Painter.

  ~*~

  As a kid, what was it about art and drawing that lured you away from the normal activities of being a kid and warranted you spending so much time practicing and sketching?

  I grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in Alphabet City and, back in the early to mid sixties, it wasn’t that great of a neighborhood. There weren’t a whole lot of kids around to be friends with. So, I found that I spent a lot of my time up in my apartment drawing. I would just while the hours away just drawing and drawing and drawing. I found it to be a good escape from the area that I grew up in.

  At that time, who were the artists that you gravitated towards?

  Well, I guess my earliest exposure to art was my older brother, Danny, who is nine years older than me. I used to watch what he did and say, "I could do that" and I would try it. I would draw stuff off of the TV screen when I was five or six years old. Then, when I was seven or eight, there was a kid selling second hand comic books in a playground near my house and I bought a couple of them. One of the first books that I bought was Avengers #57 with artwork by John Buscema in it. Even at seven or eight years old I was completely taken by this guy’s artwork and he was probably my earliest influence, and my greatest to date in my own work.

  Later on, how influenced were you by the work of people like Frank Frazetta? I see a lot of his work in some of your paintings.

  Frazetta was an influence on just about everybody who grew up with an affinity for fantasy or science fiction art. Back in the mid seventies, when the first Ballantine book came out, I was a sophomore in high school and that book really brought Frazetta into the mainstream and influenced a whole bunch of people. I remember when I was a kid I couldn’t afford to buy the books, but I would go into book stores and rip the covers off of the paperbacks and put the books on the shelf again. I would collect the full collection of old Frazetta paperback covers. He was a big influence as far as power and dynamics goes, but not as far as technique because there really is nobody who could do what Frank does, the way Frank does it. Anytime you do, you end up looking like a bad Frazetta rip-off. If you try to incorporate his compositional elements or his way of capturing tension in a figure I think it’s really beneficial to you.

  I was going to say you end up looking like Boris Vallejo then. [laughs]

  Boris was also a big influence on me when I started painting because he works very tight and very clear. His technical ability is something I’ve always really admired. I’ve always tried to combine a little bit of both: the strength and
power of John Buscema’s drawings and Frazetta’s paintings with the more technically tight aspects of, say like a Boris Vallejo. I’ve tried to get a melding of the two.

  I think your work does that because it seems like a moment captured in time whereas, in my opinion, Frazetta was always in motion and Vallejo seemed posed.

  Frazetta came from more of a comic book background, you have to understand, so he was used to putting movement and dynamics into his figures. Boris is more classically trained. With paperbacks and such, they tend to go for more of a quiet, illustrative look, than the more action oriented work. So, it’s easy to see how the two of them differ, and why they differ.

  Did you attend any art school?

  I went to Art and Design High School in New York City. It’s the only high school of its type in the country. It’s a public high school, but it’s a vocational school that gears its junior and senior years toward a career in art. I would say more than half of the curriculum would be art classes. I majored in illustration and had an advertising minor. Bernie Krigstein, who used to draw the old EC comics, was one of my teachers.