Interview with:Steven Lawrence the Illustrator [stlawrence]
ILLUSTRATION
 | What is your specialty in illustration? I tend to do a lot of social, economic, and political illustrations. My personal work consist mostly of psychological themes and how it feels to be apart of the human experience. |
| What are your regular clients like? What do they expect from you? Clients all have one thing in common, none of them are "regular." In the sense that they want something that is different and not in the business of things that they need...but something they want. Artists live on the fringe of society and what we make is not a need-based thing but a want-based. An art director wants an illustrator to make a picture for him or her. A web designer wants a character designed for their website. So understanding that each client is different and they expect you to completely satisfy their wants. So clients will give a very detailed description of what they envision and that is spectacular. It makes the job easier and other times the clients just have a brief idea with little direction imagined. So it varies quite a bit from person to person. |
| Is there a web address where we can see some of your work? Yes absolutely! www.stlawrenceart.com. I am hands on with everything. I created the site myself from top to bottom. Please visit the site frequently because there are updates made quite a bit with lots of imagery and news as to what I am doing currently or in the upcoming future. And tell a friend about me! |
| Have you completed formal art studies, or are you self-taught? When I was about 5 or 6 years old I used to trace the characters in How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Later I stopped and began to teach myself how to draw people and objects better. In 2005, after pursuing art classes at community colleges, I enrolled in Art Center College of Design where I graduated with Bachelors of Fine Arts with an emphasis on Illustration. |
| How did you get your first full assignment? What did it involve? My first full assignment was an illustration for an underground zine in Montreal, Quebec called Lickety Split Smut Zine. It was more of a collaboration with the zine editors. The theme had to do with sex as the final frontier and the illustration was to be about that theme. I ended up doing an illustration call "Sex in Space" about an astronaut detecting an female Martian in space and visible from his monitor you can see them having sex. The zine went on to win a few awards in Montreal. |
| What past or present day illustrators do you admire most? |
| How similar are your current drawings to those you did as a child? Haha no resemblance at all! |
| What was your favorite comic book as a child? I didn't have a favorite comic I loved so many of the covers to the books. Cover art years ago was so incredible and foreshadowed what was inside the book, it was great. I remember my brothers always teased me about how I never actually read the comic I just looked at the pictures. Haha, more times than not they were right. I loved Fantastic Four. It was the cover art that drew me in. Jack Kirby is a God! |
| Do you have a particular style, or does it vary a lot? I have a particular style. It's driven by line against solid flat colors. I admire the look of silkscreen effects and I try to add that quality to my work. I do quite a lot of work and preliminary sketches and drawings and they do look quite different from the final results because I do actively try to put my stamp or finger print on the final images before they are presented to the world. It becomes like a branding thing. I am aware that my voice needs to come through loud and clear. |
| What is hardest to draw? Hands and feet. |
| What type of music do you listen to while you work? It depends on the subjects. I listen to everything under the sun because I want to feel a variety of emotions and gain new perspectives. Everything I listen to is timeless so it never goes out of fashion and it is still relevant. If I am doing something for a client and it involves a more straight forward approach and it's rather simple then I may put on something that is pretty normal and sort of space out to. In some cases, if the artwork is making me feel a certain way, sad, or angry or reflective then what I hear in the background should reflect that. My line is edgy and raw and for that I need heavy and aggressive music to transform me into the mind of that. |
| Do you have a favorite work of art? No. I would say I have favorite styles or certain artists I get a great emotional involvement in because they are so talented and brilliant. It's a hard thing to pen point one single thing and say it's my favorite hands down. |
| What do you do when a client simply says "I don't like it"? I say ok. And we keep on going trying to find a way to get them to say "I like it." Things I create based on other peoples wants I am not set in stone with every little thing I make along the process of assisting them with the illustration. They commission me and I am here to do what they want. The project is more for them than it is for me. That is the nature of the game. |
| What new techniques have you been experimenting with lately? Low tech. Getting into a cheap way of altering an image. Naive artistic experimentation. Taking work to a copy store and playing with the print out to see what randomness comes from that. |
| What part of your work do you do on paper and what part digitally? I am always jumping back and forth. It would be hard to nail down what parts exactly are hand drawn on paper or physically painted and what parts are digital. Sometimes an assignment lasts for so long with so many layers and processes that I lose track of how I even did the artwork. But it is my goal to create an end result where the viewer can not really tell how I did the project. |
| What research do you do for your illustrations? A lot of sketches. Lots of source material. Online research and experimenting in the early stages to see what I like and what I can envision fitting in with the Steven Lawrence brand of illustration. Going over different compositions. And a lot of information from the client, as much as I can possibly get because the more from them the less chance of doing something they do not like. |
| Do you have colleagues with whom you share techniques, tricks, ideas, etc.? Yes I do. Friends from school and my brothers who ask a lot of questions. You have to bounce things off people, it really helps. |
| Do you have any specific goals as an illustrator? I'd like to have my hand in everything from print to web to set design, advertising, product, packaging...you name it and I am interested. When it's all said and done I would like to be proud of my life and my what I worked so hard to make my life all about. |
| What illustration web sites do you frequent? |
| What are you working on now? A poster for Waznoo.com. A southern California based e-newsletter about all things to do for fun and relaxation in the so cal area. It's a large illustration of a map of the L.A area. |
| What advice do you have for someone who likes to draw and would like to make a living from it? Keep drawing! Never stop. Love what you do and get into art for the thrill of pursuing what you love to do in life. It's not a sprint but a marathon. Getting to the goal of living off your art income doesn't happen over night. Be humble and thankful that you have a talent and skill and learn to sell yourself without selling every bit of you. |
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[stlawrence]
Steven Lawrence the Illustrator
Los Angeles - U.S.A
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