Five Questions for Shaun Tan
JA
July 13
Shaun Tan’s illustrated books – The Rabbits, The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, The Arrival and, most recently, Tales from Outer Suburbia – are loved and recognised by readers all over the world. Shaun has also worked as a concept artist for films such as Horton Hears a Who and Pixar’s WALL-E, and has just finished directing a short film version of The Lost Thing with Andrew Ruhemann. Spike sat down with him over the digital divide to find out about the problem of gravity, Lorenzo Mattotti and the beauty of emotional understatement in illustration
What’s a typical day spent drawing and illustrating like for you? Can you describe your routine?
Well, it has aspirations towards a routine without ever quite achieving it. I usually have a variety of tasks to do each week, which range from painting to administrative things (given that being an artist means also running a small business). About a third of my day is spent writing emails and moving pieces of paper from one spot to another. Another third is spent working on something digital, so still bound to a screen, more or less editing text or images. The final third (the best) is painting, drawing or writing by hand, using the same low-tech materials I’ve used since high school. Where possible, I’ll often try to commit each day to a singular activity, conserving momentum, although it’s inevitably broken up by house – work and other distractions.
How do you get into the creative mindset? Heavy metal music, spoken word or herbal tea? A favourite painting or sketch?
Yes, all of those things simultaneously :) I’ve found over the years that I just need to get started, usually through drawing on many sheets of copy-paper, and following modest threads toward something larger, and hopefully meaningful. I also try to take my time, because the quality of my work declines if I try to rush or second-guess my direction. So basically a low pressure atmosphere is ideal, although it’s perhaps the trickiest thing to sustain as a working artist.
My best ideas or solutions often come away from the studio, when washing the dishes or going for long walks. I also have lots of photos, drawings and picture clippings above my desk, including the work of many other artists, and while these are not really sources of inspiration, they do remind me of the possibilities of narrative imagery, and what good painting is, because I often forget.
If we made a surprise visit to your workspace, what would we see?
Something between a studio and dump: I blame gravity (the same force that leaves clothes on the floor). While I’m not the tidiest person in the world, I do know that there is a white pencil under that pile of manila folders to the left, and a tube of Paynes Grey somewhere behind the lightbox. The problem is I need scissors right now, and I don’t know where they are! It’s actually quite functional, but a bit small – a painting studio and office crammed into a front bedroom, objects tending to climb vertically in lieu of horizontal options, which expired some time in 2007.
Name the essentials, what do you draw with?
Most my art work and writing involves graphite pencil on paper, usually HB. I do a lot of colour sketching with pastel crayons, and much of my final artwork is rendered using oils. But in between that, I pretty much use every drawing and painting material there is. I also have a box of random printed matter under the table – old stamps, textbooks, postcards, etc. – that I use for making collages. Perhaps the most essential ‘material’ I work with currently is my laptop, getting final work ready for print, keeping artwork organised, or collaborating with animators as I have been doing recently, developing a short film ‘The Lost Thing’.
Finally, what was the last book or artwork that you loved, and why?
An illustrated book I bought recently in Italy, ‘NELL'ACQUA’ by the artist Lorenzo Mattotti, which is a series of paintings of an embracing couple floating in the sea, with very little text. It’s a slightly different ‘narrative’ to anything I’ve seen before, and the sort of book that got me interested in illustration in the first place, having more to do with emotional understatement than actual ‘illustration’.
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