This week, we asked Jacob about his inspirations, art methods, and how he developed his style.
Inspirations
I get a lot of inspirations for my art from daily experiences; a lot of negative emotions come out in my art as an outlet. From feelings of loneliness and despair, to anger and pain. I feel like that’s the main reason we make art, though. We relate to it. Empathy is the overlying concept of most art, in my opinion.I admire a lot of artists; some of my inspirations come from them. It started with just extreme music album art. The first one that got me into collages was Winston Smith, the dude who did the work for “Dead Kennedy’s.” As for drawing, I am into tattoos and stuff like that. One artist I used to love was Pushead, who did a lot of artwork for Metallica.
Art Methods
With collages, I’m always looking at magazines and medical books when I go thrifting. Usually collages start with me finding a lot of cool or fucked-up images I can use. Then, I’ll cut and lay them out and start piecing together how I want them to look. I rearrange them a lot until I get what I think is most appealing. It can take awhile, but once I finally decide, I glue them and it’s done within 2-5 hours.As for drawings, I usually get an idea in my head like “Hey this would look fucking sick.” For example, I did one drawing of a skeleton pointing while holding a scythe in the other hand. I came up with the idea and did a rough sketch while I was in France. Once I got home, I put the idea to paper. First, I did a light rendering with pencil, then ink it with micron pens. On a side note, I literally love micron best, they are the best ever. But after inking the outline, I’ll start the pointillism and stippling shading. That’s the part that takes the longest. Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of taking a picture, and digitizing it. Then, I’ll choose a title for the completed work.
How you developed your style
Well, for collages, I wanted to make something that was dark, that reflected a lot of the feelings I have and things I perceive in the world: greed, materialism, starvation, pollution, addiction, just over all gross shit. I wanted to put that on paper, and it felt like some things are better using images rather than drawings. I didn’t want to be overly gore-orientated either, as you’ll see with a lot of grindcore albums and whatnot. I definitely have little bits and pieces of it in some of my art, but for the most part, I’m not trying to only go for the shock factor; I wanted to use heavy imagery without going full snuff film. I started off doing all my collages digitally, but I now do them organically. I still do some digitally, but I prefer doing them by hand, having to find the images from various magazines and what not, and arranging it manually. It’s more of a pain in the ass, but that makes it all the more worth it.I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid. I stopped for about 6 years during high school. I began again my junior year of college. When I started drawing again, it felt great. If I never picked it up again, I wouldn’t be making it in graphic design. I am very thankful I started again. When I started drawing again, I didn’t have any nice pencils or anything to shade with. So I just thought, “fuck it, I’ll use stippling.” I did it before in an art class a long time ago, and I figured I’d try my hand at it again. It turns out, I love it. I think I might try to do some more traditional-style shading soon. I’ve been trying out new things, as I think any artist should. No one wants to see the same exact piece over and over again. But again, with both types of art, I make what I think is cool. I make things that often are outlets of how dark and shitty the world can be.
Stay tuned to our website and social media for week three!
Comments: no replies