Interview with Illustrator Sam Gilbey

Escape From Illustration Island is teaming up with The Creative Finder to bring you the following interview with one of their current Featured Illustrators, Sam Gilbey.

Sam Gilbey has been drawing for as long as he can remember, and illustrating professionally since 2004. His distinctive, colourful illustrations often feature human figures and observational elements. Combining digital and analogue techniques, they have been featured on websites and in books, comics and exhibitions all over the world, as well as in an ITV sitcom, and a test shoot for a movie. His style often draws upon, and celebrates popular culture, whether that’s movies, videogames, and/or the occassional large robot.

EFII:  Your Illustrations often feature a playful use of color.  What is your approach to color?  Do you restrict yourself with color schemes or just follow your instincts?

Sam Gilbey: The way I use colour is absolutely critical to my work. I just love to use dramatic colour and light, and that’s always been part of my style. I think it comes in part from an admiration of David Hockney, who as you know, often uses very intense colours too. Maybe it’s because I live in the UK, and looking outside I’m more likely to see greys and browns! Perhaps, like Hockey, I need to move to California! In the meantime, I produce bright imagery to stave off SAD (seasonal affective disorder). And I think I’m only half kidding on that. It also comes from spending my formative years doing fine art, where I mostly worked with acrylics. Because they dry so fast, it’s much harder to end up with the ‘muddier’ tones that you can end up with when working in oils. I do think carefully about having a balanced palette, but often I’ll just get the colour combination quite clearly in my mind, and it won’t change much over the course of the work. So it’s instinctive yes, but of course comes from appreciating the science of colour relationships in the first place.

EFII:  What is your creative process as far as combining digital and analogue techniques?

SG: Essentially everything I do starts as a drawing somewhere, even if it’s the crudest of suggestions; almost a visual short-hand which helps me distil the concept I have running around my head. Before too long I’ll be working in Painter with my Wacom tablet, so working digitally, but drawing by hand. Towards the end of the process I’ll then move into Photoshop, where I have much better control over colour nuances, and can add the ‘special effects’, for want of a better term, which bring everything together into a cohesive whole. But it all starts with the drawing really, whether that’s on a pad or straight onto the wacom.

EFII:  What is it about popular culture that inspires you and how do you add your own personal slant to this subject matter?

SG: That’s a tricky one – for some reason I’ve just always felt compelled to illustrate my favourite things from movies, comics, games and so on. It’s something to do with feeling inspired by the artists and creators who invented those things in the first place, and a vague sense of wanting to celebrate that, and pass it on. Perhaps more importantly, it’s just that drawing superheroes and giant robots is fun! It goes right back to me being a kid. When I was seven I did a bunch of ink drawings of Transformers, which I photocopied and sold at our school fair for people to colour in. Which sounds a bit weird when I think about it, but I guess there’s something in there about not growing up. I.e. through my artwork I can still have a childlike enthusiasm, and it’s about not letting go of that excitement I used to feel about getting a new comic, a new toy, or whatever.

EFII:  To what do you attribute the inclusion of your work in such a wide variety of media (comics, web, TV, movies)?

SG: Well, I suppose I’m very lucky, in that I love the design work that I do, and I love the illustration too. In the end they’re both about problem solving – it’s just that the tools you use are different. As far as illustration goes, I also have Edgar Wright to thank, who’s been hugely supportive since he saw some Shaun of the Dead artwork I did around six years ago. He got it featured in the official comic adaptation, and through him, and Dick Lunn, the Hot Fuzz art director, I’ve got to do some work for television, a piece for a movie test shoot, and a couple of other awesome things that simply would never have happened otherwise. Also the point is that whether I’m getting paid or not, I keep illustrating, and always have ideas for personal pieces. Over time I’m hoping that by filling my portfolio with the kind of work I’d like to do, that more people will want to commission me for it. And little by little that process seems to be working.

EFII:  What do you think inspires Art Directors to hire you for their projects?

SG: I suppose you’d need to ask them, but hopefully it’s because they can sense the passion in my work, whether it’s trying to capture a physical likeness in a portrait, using a bold colour palette, or if they just like the marks I make. The main thing is, I stick to what I do, and I’m in it for the long haul. I’m not interested in changing my style to suit trends or anything like that – in the end all you can aim to do is to please yourself. Then along the way if people connect with that, and some of those happen to be art directors, then I’m ready to collaborate and create something great with them.

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Special thanks to Sam Gilbey and TAXI + The Creative Finder for making this interview possible. You can view more of Sam’s Illustration work here, and you can learn more about The Creative Finder here.

Related Posts:

• Interview with Mikael Kangas
• Interview with Samuel Werczler
• Interview with Marek Haiduk
• Interview with Illustrator Antoine Corbineau
• EFII Podcast Episode 32 – Martin French

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