COLLECTION 2 - AVANT-GARDE

KALTBLUT: Now let’s speak about movies.
I’m very impressed with your Baddies
and Goddies series. It seems you have a
very deep film culture. What made you start
drawing those series?
ROBERT: It was pretty much random to be
honest. A local gallery was having a movie
themed exhibition and invited me to contribute
a piece. I wanted to do a poster that you
could live with - when I was a kid I like pictures
with lots of details and people you could
name. I underestimated how long it would take
though.
Each one takes about three hours, so there’s
at least 150 hours work on each print - probably
much more than that! Because I have a full
time job, it means each print ends up taking
around 3 months to complete. When I finished
doing the Baddies, it only seemed natural to do
the Goodies to complete the set. I have plans
for more when I get the time... I have an idea
for a ‘monster family tree’ up my sleeve...
KALTBLUT: Name some of you favorite
films of all time.
ROBERT: How long have you got? Excalibur.
Akira. Star Wars. Harold and Maude. Chinatown.
Dune. Toy Story. Duel. Flash Gordon.
Danger Diabolik. Let the Right One In. The Evil
Dead II.
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie. Kes. Invasion
of the Body Snatchers. Midnight Cowboy.
Five Easy Pieces. Sunset Boulevard. Get Carter.
2001. The Wicker Man.
KALTBLUT
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KALTBLUT: Where are your influences coming from?
ROBERT: I get influences from different places. For general
approach I’m heavily influenced by British comic artist Mick
Mcmahon - there’s a humour in everything he does, without
it ever being ‘funny’. For figures I look at much older stuff
like Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley. For colour schemes
there’s Disney and Pixar, and the illustrator Bob Peak - he
did very famous film posters for the likes of Star Trek and
Excalibur but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. His colours
are sensational.
For composition and simplicity you can’t beat Miroslav Sasek
and Charley Harper. There’s a hundred other artists out
there. The trick is to absorb without copying.
KALTBLUT: What music do you listen to when you
work?
ROBERT: When I’m really enjoying work, everything gets
blanked out and I find I’ve not really heard the record I might
have put on. At the moment I’m listening to the Soft Machine
a lot and I put the Fiery Furnaces on more often than not. It’s
quite angular, complicated music. If the music’s too relaxing
I don’t hear it!
KALTBLUT: Some other artists you admire?
ROBERT: It’s hard to name some and not others but I
love Warwick Johnson Cadwell and Jonathan Edwards’ work
- and luckily I’ve got to know them both. There’s another
guy called Elliot Elam who does amazing drawings of people
he sees on the tube. There’s a couple of Spanish illustrators
I’m really jealous of - Luis Agreda and Javier Olivares. There’s
a hundred artists out there whose work I admire but you
should check those guys out. I think they all have that sense
of humour in common, even though what they draw isn’t
necessarily funny. It’s like there’s humour in every stroke of
their pens.
KALTBLUT: We live in the digital era but what part
of your work is on paper and when does it becomes
digital?
ROBERT: I feel somehow bad about this but 95% of the
time my work is digital straight away. I hardly work on paper
at all. When I was a teenager I used to draw graphics for
computer games, so I’ve been using a mouse as long as I’ve
used a pencil! The frustrating thing is that you can plan all
you want but often the best drawings just happen straight
off.
KALTBLUT: If we had this interview again in a few years,
how would you imagine your life to be?. Like one of your
alter egos or inside the studio drawing the “comic” side
of life. What are your goals?
ROBERT: My goals are fairly vague. I’ve been lucky enough
to do lots of different things, from computer games and animation
to design and branding and advertising, to illustration.
The joy of it is not knowing where it will take you. I only
hope I’m still drawing, and can look back on what I’m doing
now and think how crude it is!