Interview with:Gregory Nemec [nemec]
ILLUSTRATION
 | What is your specialty in illustration? I work in traditional scratchboard for an old-fashioned look, to resemble woodcut or engraved artwork from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, I also have a contemporary sensibility and a more conceptual approach when needed. Many of my clients have commented that they come to me not so much for my high level of craft, but for my ability to conceptualize and create concrete imagery from highly abstract ideas. |
| What are your regular clients like? What do they expect from you? My regular clients have no single profile. Their needs range from technical/how-to illustrations to decorative patterns for high-end home decor to concept-driven editorial illustration. They expect lots of different things from me, and often rely on my versatility. One art director needed an illustration painted directly on the surface of a globe, and came to me, even though I had never shown him that particular skill before. |
| Is there a web address where we can see some of your work? |
| Have you completed formal art studies, or are you self-taught? I am a graduate of the illustration department of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. On the computer (Photoshop, stop-motion animation, and film editing) I am primarily self-taught. |
| How did you get your first full assignment? What did it involve? The first two substantial jobs I got out of college were an author's self-published book about mankind's perceptions of God, and a poster for the first music festival put on by a local arts organization. The book about God was research-intensive and required lots of reference photos. The art was done with ink washes and a little black linework. The music festival poster was a bold woodcut-style image and text. I did another poster the next year for the second annual festival, and continued for twenty festivals! |
| What past or present day illustrators do you admire most? Christoph Niemann is the contemporary I admire most, as all his work is clean, clever, fresh, and funny. His worst ideas still seem better than most people's best ideas.
There are too many past illustrators to mention, but Rockwell Kent and Lynd Ward come to mind as people whose techniques and sensibilities I admire. |
| How similar are your current drawings to those you did as a child? I can draw much better now, but I still am a sucker for robots and monsters. |
| What was your favorite comic book as a child? Mad Magazine, especially the reprints from the early ones in the 1950's. I also loved Bernie Wrightson's covers for Swamp Thing. And there was a publisher called Gold Key that had a title called Turok, Son of Stone, about two American Indians trapped in a world of dinosaurs. I loved that. |
| Do you have a particular style, or does it vary a lot? It varies according to the project and client. Some of my clients know me well enough that they trust I will choose the right media and style for a given job. I also constantly explore new ways of making art, like sculpture and animation, and those things all influence and change my style in other media. |
| What is hardest to draw? Specific cars. Hire someone else if you need a particular Porsche or whatever. Other than that, if you can think it, I can draw it. |
| What type of music do you listen to while you work? I rarely listen to music when I work. Mostly, I listen to podcasts about current events, film, fiction, etc. I really learned to draw in high school religion and lit classes, listening to someone talking while I drew, so that is really comfortable for me. |
| Do you have a favorite work of art? Pan's Labyrinth left me aesthetically exhilarated and emotionally drained, so that was about the perfect work of art for me. |
| What do you do when a client simply says "I don't like it"? With final art, that has only happened if there were too many cooks, and what I thought was an approved concept didn't get to all the right people before I did the final art. Then the boss finally looks at the final and says "This is not what I wanted at all."
If it happens at the sketch stage, then I have enough humility to do more sketches. I actually enjoy doing lots of sketches to hone in on exactly the thing that solves the problem. But, sometimes they will never be happy, usually having nothing to do with the illustrator, but having to do with a flaw in their request that they are still unaware of. Sometimes you are (metaphorically) trying to draw a lemon and they don't want it to be shaped like a lemon, or yellow. Once you are jumping through endless hoops and feel like you will never get the applause, you never will. But you need to tread those waters lightly, because if you throw in the towel, you are the scapegoat instead of the person who requested the non-lemon lemon. I have hopefully learned to see those projects for what they are at the pitch stage, and don't accept them. |
| What new techniques have you been experimenting with lately? I have been doing lots of layering and playing with transparency in the digital step of my art. And I am always learning more about clarity and impact while editing film and animation, which helps me in the illustration world too. |
| What part of your work do you do on paper and what part digitally? Pretty much every line is done traditionally on scratchboard, and every color is added digitally. Sometimes, the black line of the scratchboard is digitally turned to a different color. Since I love the look of the scratchboard line but don't want the images to get too visually heavy, coloring and lightening the line is a great discovery for me. |
| What research do you do for your illustrations? That varies with the job. Sometimes a job is 90% research and finding reference and sometimes I can start sketching immediately. |
| Do you have colleagues with whom you share techniques, tricks, ideas, etc.? Yes, and it is good to have an illustrator lunch, or poker game. And teaching helps for communicating with other artists, even if they are in college or younger. |
| Do you have any specific goals as an illustrator? There are dream projects that have been brewing in my head (and a little bit on paper) for years, but they may or may not happen. My goal is for all of us to keep illustration alive as a viable form of expression. |
| What illustration web sites do you frequent? I look at drawger occasionally, lots of interesting artists there. |
| What are you working on now? An illustration of how to build a picnic table, reading two legal articles that need to be made less dry with my artwork, a diagram about work styles and how they interrelate, a decorative pattern for lacquerware, and editing a dozen kids' animated movies. |
| What advice do you have for someone who likes to draw and would like to make a living from it? Do something better than anyone else. It doesn't have to be a grand something, but a something that is uniquely yours. |
| 
620 visits Whohub
Gregory Nemec
Pleasantville, NY, USA
|
95721 interviews created
![[nemec] Gregory Nemec](http://www.whohub.com/_pics/12792.jpg?1337599004)
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS