Six questions for Oslo Davis

JA June 14

If you’re a reader or a newsbuff, chances are you’ll have seen Oslo Davis‘ work everywhere. A regular contributor to Meanjin, his illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, as well as various local journals and magazines. He draws a monthly cartoon for the Readings Monthly, a couple of cartoons each week for the Age and a new collection of his Overheard cartoons, which appear each week in the the Sunday Age, will be published later this month. Spike swapped words with him over the digital divide for the beginning of a new, irregular interview series with an emphasis on the finer things in life and the creative process.

What’s a typical day spent illustrating like for you? Can you describe your routine?

I guess this is not the sort of boring crap you want to hear, but I have a sketchbook at the breakfast table that I write and draw in while me and my two daughters eat our toast. Every morning I try to list all the new things that annoy me. Annoyance is at the heart of my work. (Not heartless annoyance, mind. Just healthy normal annoyance.) For instance, today this is what I wrote down:

How people go ga ga over Mad Men (even though I don’t mind Med Men)

How some older couples buy matching bikes

How all of my shirts have at least one stain on them

How Paul Auster novels are grossly overrated

That British blond female judge on So You Think You Can Dance Wars

How do you get into the creative mindset? Heavy metal music, spoke word, herbal tea, a Magic Doodle?

I can’t. I mean, there’s nothing that I can do to turn on that good old ideas machine. I wish I was like Murakami who wakes up at whatever godforsaken hour and just types, but I’m not. I’m not even Japanese! I once tried sitting in my chair staring into space to clean my mind, but five minutes in I was back on YouTube checking out Korean porn.

What I do do is always carry a notebook with me all the time, be alert to silly stuff in the world, and to be mindful of all the things that annoy me (see question one). Sometimes, after an editor has given me some godforsaken knotty text to wring an illustration out of, I dwell on it for days, thinking it over and over, even when I’m talking to people. I might be discussing with you the best way to drive from Williamstown to Healsville after work on a weekday, but in my mind I’m trying to think up a gag cartoon about climate change (there is NOTHING funny to be drawn about climate change, believe me).

If we made a surprise visit to your workspace, what would we see?

Me, quickly putting my pants back on. And an Ikea drawing desk next to a computer desk with my computer on it. Bookshelves. Boxes. An empty packet of Kingstons.

How does an idea start for you? With an image, or with the text?

For magazine and commissioned work it is the text, or the ‘idea’ behind the drawing. It has to. The idea must be fully formed and conceived and drawn in my mind before I pick up my pen. The drawing part is the easy part. Or, to have a go at putting it another way: drawings are the breast implants and the idea is Pamela Anderson.

ONE DAY though, I hope to be good enough that the drawing is so RIGHT that the idea is secondary, but that’s kind of a zen level of drawing is kind that only people like Saul Steinberg can achieve.

Name the essentials, what do you draw with?

Recently I’ve gone back to using a nib and ink. From Japan, I have some nice set of watercolours, and have a stockpile of two types of brush pens that I import in bulk. I have a heaps of skecthbooks: moleskins and little cheap ones from Muji in Japan. One day I’d like to take a course in watercolouring. I took a life drawing class once but the model’s piercings freaked me out.

Finally, what was the last book, cartoon or artwork that you loved, and why?

William Steig is a now dead ex-New Yorker cartoonist whose work traversed playful kids' picture books (Sylvester and the Magic Pebble made me cry the first time I read it, but I was hungover and had just driven back from Swan Hill) and typical New Yorker-style gag cartoons. Steig was an occasionally surly man from a working class background who believed in social justice, so I kind of identify with him. I bought a few of his books lately.

I also bought Bruce Eric Kapan’s latest cartoon collection ‘I love you, I hate you, I’m hungry.’ Kaplan draws those bitterly cynical eyeless husband and wife (mostly) cartoons in the New Yorker, the ones that come out with lines like ‘There has to be room in the relationship for me to say I’m divorcing you.’

I also like this.

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