Jamie Hewlett: Drawing is about putting lines where they belong

In 2001, a unique band let the world see their first single MV "Clint Eastwood". They are the band Gorillaz - the creative product of a collaboration between musician Damon Albarn (lead singer of Blur) and visual artist Jamie Hewlett - composed of four virtual musicians, each with their own personality and style, and the world they live in is also vividly detailed. . These cartoon characters quickly captured the imagination of fans to this day.

How did Jamie draw the four characters Gorillaz? What appealed to him about this project? How did an obsession with painting turn into hundreds of hand-painted pine trees (yes, you read that right)? Let’s hear what Joe Zadeh learned after chatting with Jamie.

All images ? Jamie Hewlett Copyright

5:15 is a wonderful time in the morning. The soft blue morning light is mainly reserved for birds; humans have not yet talked, emails are still sleeping, and iPhones have not yet made noise. British illustrator Jamie Hewlett likes to get up at this time. He opened his eyes, swiped his finger through the news, and then walked out of his apartment in Paris's 11th arrondissement for a day's walk.

The Promenade Plantée is an aerial walkway built in 1993 on the basis of an abandoned 19th-century viaduct, ten meters above the streets of Paris. It is full of green trees, grass, flowers and a small square swimming pool. Jamie will walk the entire 4.7 kilometers to the forest at the end, and then back again.

At around 8:30, he took a cup of coffee and a croissant, and walked leisurely through the wall into his studio (a small single room next door, which was acquired from the previous tenant). bought).

There are many books, postcards, magazine clippings, works and other things he has accumulated over the years. Among them, the most eye-catching ones include a New York Police Department helmet, a replica of a Thompson submachine gun and the skull of a monk. . "To some extent, these things have been painted into the works," he said with a smile.

When he sits down to work, he likes to turn on BBC Radio 4 programs and listen to them, because "if I stare at a page all day long, it would be nice to feel like I am absorbing information at the same time." He adjusted himself into a creative state. At this moment, creativity began to flow, the meaning of his writing began to emerge, and his whole body and mind gradually became better.

"This moment," he said, "feels so perfect when it can actually appear before your eyes, and every line you draw on the paper is just right. Really, painting is about putting the lines in place. It's where it's supposed to be. With the right lines, the right colors, and you'll find something incredibly good."

At least, that's how his workday should look. "I haven't been able to do anything decent for about five weeks," he admits. weeks," he admits. "I've sort of hit a dead end.")

For 25 years, Jamie has been an award-winning illustrator, artist and music video director, and the whole world has admired him It's within easy reach.

In 1988, when he was only 20 years old, he created the cult comic series "Tank Girl" with his friend Alan Martin. Tank Girl is a female character who swears, drinks strong alcohol, loves violence, and wants to dominate sexual relationships. At that time, the style of female comic characters was generally still "porn actresses wearing capes", but this time there was a character who truly made men feel threatened and scared.

She became an iconic icon at comic book outlets at the time, inspiring opponents of Margaret Thatcher, influencing a group of designers like Vivienne Westwood, and even directly started the The craze for bad girl fashion from the early 90s.

"Tank Girl" was the springboard for Jamie's career. Ten years later, in 1998, Gorillaz, the world's largest virtual band, became his next collaboration project.

Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn were both born in 1968. Their birthdays are only 11 days apart. They are both monkeys. When they were 30, the pair found each other living in a flat above a carpet shop in west London. Both of them had just experienced a drastic change in their lives, saying goodbye to a relationship of many years, and were looking for a new direction in life.

Damon bought a plasma TV, and the two watched a lot of MTV together, confused by the blazing pop culture. Everything looks so fake, so commercialized, and it looks like it is artificially made, not skillfully made by hand.

They responded with their new work Gorillaz. Four two-dimensional characters form a virtual band, with the stereotyped personalities of the band members and ridiculous personal backgrounds. Everyone has their own room for development, such as being able to be interviewed according to their own personality.

They have four members - 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel. Jamie said, "All good bands have four people. Three is too few, and five is too many."

"Ah D is a bit like an innocent angel. He looks cute and stands at the front. He doesn't need to be too smart, but he can sing. The prototype of the devil is Keith Richards (guitarist of the Rolling Stones). A Satan-like character; Luo Pang is a hip-hop guy with routines and life experience.

"Xiao Mian was originally designed to be a Caucasian girl, 20 years old, but she felt a bit boring. I wanted her because I wanted to put a little girl in the band who played the guitar well and would be more fun, so she became Japanese - why not? ”

Twenty years have passed, Gorillaz has released 6 albums, and the members have also experienced changes. Xiaomian has grown up and has become more feminine (“Cartoon characters generally don’t grow up,” Jamie Reviews said), Ah D has also transformed from an exquisite wallflower into an extremely confident man.

In their latest album "The Now Now" (released in June 2018), Ah D. His self-confidence has become a questionable arrogance. This year, he also acted as a keynote speaker in interviews, expressing vague opinions with passion, which makes no sense if you look closely.

"I have seen through it. The ability to get to the core of things,” he said in an interview with Noisey, “is like the X-ray machine at the airport that can see through your pants. "

"I guess there's a lesson we can learn from this," Jamie explained. "Sometimes it's good to be less confident. Without too much self-confidence, you will be humble and focus on what matters most, which is your work and art. You should focus on these, not yourself. ”

“That’s why I paint, you know? ” He continued, “People can look at my paintings and everything I want to say or express is already in them. I can't perform on stage every night, like Damon and others, that's not who I am. I'm amazed that other people can do this - be in the public eye, be famous, but not let your inner self control the situation, otherwise you will lose control. ”

To keep the world of Gorillaz alive, each album presents the story lines of the band members, their dynamics and plans.

The process of shaping the story line is the same every time . Once the music was made, Jamie, Damon and Remi Kabaka Jr. (drummer who joined after 2000) got together and worked on themes and other ideas, talking endlessly about "what do we like, what are we Those who don’t like it, what’s wrong with this fucking world, what do we want to express, bla bla bla, speak freely, without restraint,” Jamie felt.

These conversations will lead him to draw the first batch of promotional artwork for the album, which will then be handed over to the copywriting team to form a story structure and flesh it out with details.

Once the album promotion started, Jamie would be drowned in drawings. New design draft, final draft, storyboard script, MV creative, product, adjustment, design, revised draft.

In 2017, he helped create a VR video for the single "Saturnz Barz", in which they created a surreal 360° haunted house experience for fans to explore. The video set a new record for the premiere of a VR video on YouTube, with 3 million views in the first 48 hours. Jamie's memories of that time are "computer crashes" and "scratching his head."

"Making a video also requires countless sketches, and often you can't see the sketches because they turn directly into animated videos," he explains.

So, the creation he puts into each album can be regarded as a milestone. It is not difficult to understand that while Gorillaz has left a deep footprint in the field of music, it is also indelible in the field of art. Search for “Gorillaz” on the visual social networking site DeviantArt, and you’ll get 133,120 results inspired by Hewlett’s work.

For decades, he has continued to train deliberately at work and maintained his excitement for creation. With each album as a cycle, he will change various new illustration styles. For example, during "Humanz", I focused on abstract collage, while during "The Now Now", I focused on black lines and flat colors.

Using every album promotion cycle, he tries to master that style. It should be said that this process is almost always pleasant. But in the last few months (Gorillaz released two double-disc albums in the last 18 months), he became “I can’t say I’m bored, because I love Gorillaz so much, but the peak state at the beginning is definitely gone. Never to return."

He immediately hated looking at the computer. It gave him a headache and he thought he would go blind. He increasingly longed to be away from the screen. Now, he has bought two large canvases and a new box of paint from the painting equipment store, and plans to try a new offline creation method, even though he does not know what is waiting for him.

In 2017, Taschen Publishing House released a complete retrospective of his works, 426 pages. This is the first time his works have been collected into a volume. Looking through it, it is not difficult to see the pattern elements that form his unique style.

Hewlett's universe is usually a grimy dystopia, where the only remnant of ordinary civilization is the childish but comforting sense of humor that hangs in the air. His figures have upturned noses or protruding mouths, and there is a lingering hint of a monkey or a gorilla. He sees things with a sharp eye, so he always draws jagged or angular teeth, fingers and joints, and he wears trendy clothes.

The attention to detail is almost crazy, from the distinctive placement of buttons on the jacket to the way the socks are strategically placed around the ankles. He's both punk and cartoonish, or, perhaps, neither.

Deep down, he's a nostalgia junkie. The most profound influence on him so far is the American satirical humor magazine "Mad Magazine" from the 1950s to 1960s. He loves Norman Rochwell's storytelling oil paintings and also likes the satire of the painter in "Mad" magazine.

The day before I interviewed him, he had spent an afternoon watching Daffy Duck on YouTube. "It still makes me laugh non-stop," Jamie said, "He's a selfish little bastard, and I love it so much."

Jamie's interest in past visual works does not affect his interest in new things. Accept. The first time he met his wife, French actress Emma de Caunes, she offered to read tarot cards for him.

"I imagined a scene in a James Bond movie, where she revealed a death card and then there was thunder." He said with a smile, "But there wasn't." "Whenever he encounters a problem now, he also said that he would ask his wife to read Tarot cards for help.

One day he came across a book "The Way of Tarot" (The Way of Tarot), written by the mysterious avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Inspired by Jodorowsky's research on the Marseille Tarot, Jamie decided to draw his own set of 22 arcane main decks.

"I wanted to re-draw a set based entirely on his interpretation." He said, "I couldn't help myself. I didn't use a computer. I drew it by hand with watercolor, gouache and India ink. It took a lot of time. It took a long time, because if something went wrong along the way, I had to start over. It took me three years to complete it.”

Jamie’s view of tarot cards is a bit dreamy and absurd. He leaned toward formal mysticism—on the Chariot card, his horse appears charged with divine electricity; on the Bishop card, the bishop appears to be the overlord of the galaxy. But his wisdom also emerges: in the Lovers card, lovers groping each other coldly and absently; in the Fools card, the Fool has a monkey's hand on his butt.

When Jamie goes to buy coffee and croissants every morning, he sometimes sees Jodorowsky in that coffee shop. The 89-year-old director also lives in the same neighborhood and sometimes reads tarot cards to strangers. At a party, Jamie happened to meet the director's daughter. "You should show him the tarot cards you drew," she said. "I'm sure he'll like it very much."

But Jamie didn't do that, and maybe he won't in the future. "I think it's best not to meet the people you admire and just stay the same. I find it very tiring to meet people. I just want to be alone and paint my paintings quietly.

"When I don't When painting, I am also thinking about painting. If something doesn't go well in the middle of a painting, I have to stop and do something else, and then I keep thinking about the painting and how to solve it next. No matter where I go or who I meet, I just want it to be over so I can get back to work. I'm addicted and this is what I dream about. ”

So addicted that he will be hit by unexpected things and in unexpected ways. For example, on a trip to the west coast of France, Jamie was fascinated by the pine trees outside the holiday home. They were attracted by the pine trees from the North Atlantic Ocean. One evening, as the sun set and the trees cast long shadows around them, he sat down to draw them (he always brought a black felt-tip pen and notepad with him on vacation). . It felt great. So he got on his bike and traveled around the peninsula to find other pine trees to paint.

"There was a pine tree that looked like two people having sex," he said. “There’s another one that looks like it’s going to fight with the pine tree next to it. They all have stories to tell. I imagine they really can move, but it's just too slow for our naked eyes to notice. It would take you ten years of recording their movements to figure out their pantomime. ”

Like Monet who painted haystacks for four years, Jamie spent several months painting only pine trees. This became his most enjoyable job; just because he wanted to paint. Facing the pine trees Painted and painted and painted.

It was crazy, it was awesome, and he felt like something had to be dispelled. At night, he began to dream about the texture of tree bark. Finally one day, amid the sound of BBC Radio 4's program, he put down his pen and said, "That's it, I don't want to paint pine trees anymore." So it was over.

Jamie’s pine trees are primitive and rough but full of emotion. Staring at them seems to take you into a no-man's land. They have a dark feel like the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, just like the brothers and sisters in "Candy House" who had no idea of ??the future before encountering the child-eating witch, and stared at such trees at that time.

There is a study of trees, but also a study of light. A tree can look so different depending on whether it is bathed in light or hidden in darkness.

Jamie hung a picture of a pine tree in his bedroom. It was one his wife particularly liked, so they framed it and hung it on the wall. Sometimes in the morning, while they were lying in bed drinking coffee, they realized they were staring at this painting. To this day, they swear they still find details that they had never noticed before, hidden in the shadows or shapes of bark. The details are hidden underneath. Painting within painting within painting.