Barry answered a few quick questions to give us a more detailed insight into the creative process…
Tell us about the kind of work you do? For the most part I work in ink on paper, hand drawn illustrations that are based on fairly simple ideas then executed in fine detail.
How did you become an artist and how long have you been doing it? Well, I’ve always drawn ever since I was old enough to hang onto a crayon – whether that was sketching, doodling or working on more carefully considered finished pieces – but that kind of stopped when I started working in an office doing the 9 to 5 thing. A few years ago I had become really bored working my full time day job – which was a pretty dry gig in the architecture industry – and needed some kind of creative outlet so I wouldn’t go insane. At that point I started drawing again and realised it not only has awesome sanity-restoring properties but how much I love making work. It’s naturally progressed from there.
Where does the inspiration for your work come from? So many things… Old cartoons, cool looking animals, Pop art and nostalgia.
What was the inspiration for the piece you created for Pedestrian? Can you describe the ‘creative process’ behind the work? The brief was left pretty open, except that the guys said they wanted something involving a zebra which was inspired by the Pedestrian.tv logo, the zebra crossing. If you look at my previous work you’ll notice animals come up a lot and they’re probably one of my favourite subjects, so that brief made me pretty happy. I like to come up with a strong idea before doing any actual drawing, then i will sketch it out to see if it works. When I was happy with the feel and character of the zebra I manually inked in the sketch. The zebra’s coat kind of looked like one of those hypnotic optical illusions and that was the idea behind turning it into a repetitive pattern. I made that effect by taking a photo of the illustration on my phone which was synched up to the ATIV Book 9 Lite (a very handy function), then I coloured and finished it in Illustrator and Photoshop. It’s really up the viewer to guess why that one zebra is looking at them. I think he’s probably just trying to creep you out.
See more of Barry’s work at his website.
