© Martin Olsson, 2011 

Hear Ye! A sermon on style by an artist who loves to talk.

Simple, striking and strong. That's the kind of drawings I like to look at, if they make me smile, so much better. A lifelong interest in cartoons, particularly of the classical single panel type has molded my style more than anything else. Sometimes they have a caption, sometimes they don't. They both share humour as a language to put across a message, however, and this has stayed with me. When I draw, or THINK a drawing, some humourous element always sneaks in. I abhor "serious" drawing, unless it is "proper" drawings from real life. Academical sketching or realistic life drawing has me gasping in awe. But the middle ground, before one reaches the jocular shores of Cartoonia leaves me cold and uninterested. Yawn. It must be GOOD or FUN (or thought-provoking) otherwise I find myself asleep.

As is well known, very serious matters indeed can be put in cartoon format and still lose none of their gravity. I like that. Cartoons as a language that encompasses anything from death and social injustice to the hilarious nicompoopery of humans, animals and life itself. A laugh gives us a way out at times, from all things serious and heavy.

If the viewer has no idea of what the underlying "message" of a cartoon happens to be, but it still makes him or her smile, well then the drawing, or painting' works on two levels, and that's a steep 100% more than one boring old level.

We're born, then we enjoy stuff, then we die. The journey continues. So I try to have fun when I draw and paint, and when I smile at my childish images, there's a good chance someone else will too. 

The painter Jean Dubuffet brought "Art Brut", or "Outsider Art" as it is called in english to the public's attention, which stands for art by untrained persons, sometimes children, religious visionaries, prisoners, people suffering from psychological illness or learning difficulties, simply put any obsessed self-taught artists. Often these artist share a compulsion to create images for themselves. Also influenced by Dubuffet's art, as well as the strength an "untrained" line can convey, I felt a connection for me in simple or "childish" illustration that always has intrigued me. It's all about directness and straightforward communication for me. Say it, clearly, strongly and preferably with a dash of humour. 

The naming of artwork is an important aspect for Dubuffet. The process of putting a title on a painting, for instance, is often as important as what the image looks like. Sometimes however, he resorts to disarmingly simple titles, "Road With Men" is one of my favourites. Hilarious. A green painting, a road, with men on it. Perfection. I found myself drifting into this way of naming images as it helped me find the right image file in my computer. Thus the nearly total void of clever or ambient titles of my drawings and paintings in this here collection.

"That is best, which works best." to quote Mother Ann Lee, shaker.

How I work with the brief. 

To put it short and succinct:

1.You get in touch with me.

2. You explain your idea, and I'll aim to give you a few rough ideas immediately.  

3. I go away and work up some very loose suggestive sketches once we have agreed on fees and deadlines.

4. The "To-And-Fro-Stage" is often done by email, I show you my work as it develops, and this is your chance for feedback.

5. The finishing stage. I deliver an image you're happy with, as you have had creative input along the way. Pretty simple.

Some examples from previous commissions.

I've taken three of my drawings from this site, to discuss deeper. I'd like to elaborate on how the drawing evolved from the clients brief, and what I used from the brief to "hang the drawing up on". 

"Money"

This is a drawing I made for Giant Impact, and the brief was simply to illustrate the process of balancing incomes versus outgoings, and the importance to be aware of this balance.

It had to be a bold image, as it was to be shrunk in size considerably. Well, thought I, I'll start as I most often do, with a person. A "dude", or "dudette" will catch the viewer's eye instantly. So, now they're looking, I continued down the symbolic road, and added the capitalist chimney stack hat, coloured his outfit grey, again a "clerical" colour, as worn by office people or bankers worldwide. Playing around with the words "flow", "cashflow" "in" and "out" lead to the flow of gold coins from above into the hat on the left side, the side we "read" first, and the dreary outgoings is on the right side.

A good old fashioned moneybag, as is recognised by the vast majority of people, here signifies the capital. And as outgoings are taken from the already amassed capital, or profits, this bag was adorned with a hole. Oops, the money flow away again. To maximise profits, one has to have more falling into one's lap than is taken from one's bags. A detail I soon added was the overflowing of coins into the hat. Yes, we earn, but it's desperately hard to collect it all, what one is owed so to speak. So some spills over and is lost forever. But the money falls, as is right and proper, into the entrepreneurial hat, the symbol of enterprise. The man in the middle, well his pose reminded me of that of the famous "Justice Is Blind" pose, and I decided to make him "blind" too, by closing his eyes. It's a mammoth task to keep your eye on all the comings and goings and sometimes we must put our trust into vague calculations, estimations, budgets and other inexact tools to keep an idea of how and where the money goes. Thus my dude has his eyes shut.

 I added words to the little image, so as to avoid any ambiguities. I needed this drawing to be read in approximately two and a half seconds, then adding words is fine. The other colours were chosen from a childlike palette, so as to add speed again to readability. No doubt an image like this can be subtlified no end, but this was quite against my agenda here.

 

 "All The King's Men"

Buxton Opera Festival set up the opera "All The King's Men" in 2010, and I was commissioned to make an illustration to appear in the programme. The opera featured many local children and was written for a predominantly young audience. 

It was set in the English Civil War, and based on the siege of Gloucester in 1643. I spoke at length with the client, and together we arrived at the style, and design of the final drawing. Firstly, the opera was meant for children, this was foremost in my mind when sketching out suggestions. The final result must be appealing to children. So, a simplified line drawing, and I cast my mind back to what I liked when I was ten years old, or so. Well, it's a war, and them helmets are very easily recognised, I have to use them. So, for weaponry I chose the pike, a huge stick, very obvious in an image, a stick of pure hostility.

The client indicated their strong preference for hand drawn imagery, in this case. So in good old-fashioned style I opted for the nib pen, and coloured ink! How very analogue. No extra colours, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. The composition I used as a child was often highly static, flat profile, or full frontal straight images. No subtleties. So, an array of soldiers, standing to attention, with their pikes ready. I found a rather lovely pattern emerging, just identical soldiers beside each other in a row. Sublime. Now I could have used the "copy and paste" function on the computer, but this would have been completely anathema to what I aspired to do. Thus I drew, by hand, each man, helmet and pike, including the myriad of half-visible ones at the back of the soldiers. There is a sense of depth, but a most crude one. Tips of helmets, additional pikes into the distance.

A good soldier obey orders, without questions. So I gave them no mouths. But I did give them clown-noses, however. See for yourselves. Big gloves,and spaghetti-legs. Fun, but serious at the same time. The client was happy with the end result and so was I. Simple and strong, without compromising in lightness or gravity. Done.   

 

 

"Check Man"

A tricky brief came from a local Industrial Health & Safety Laboratory. The challenge was to elucidate participants of an information course of  how to correctly approach the design and installation of Local Exhaust Ventilation in the workplace. Phew. I mention the cumbersome title for the brief as this was something of which I had no idea, nor previous experience with. Not only was this an obstacle to overcome, but to add to the challenge was an extremely short deadline.

The good news was that I could work in more or less constant communication with the client, and as I haven't met many problematical topics that couldn't be solved by the drawing of funny little men, I was indeed up to the task, I felt.

In the aforementioned brief we had to give a "face" to a particular member of the process of surveying safety in the workplace. This particular fellow had to be a bit of a "bureaucrat", however. Not the most genuinely concerned inspector, but rather one who were more interested in ticking boxes in lists, "one size fits all" solutions to health issues. Clipboards at the ready, and more with his eyes "down" in his paperwork than "up" at the reality of the given plant and it's issues.

Well, thought I, white coats are a must for academical fellows, crossing the boundary between the office with it's computers and the real situation on the shop floor. Also glasses, of course. I love clichés, see. His tongue sticking out in his earnest attempts to make the ticked boxes tally up with his findings in reality. Paperwork galore, of course. And a carry-along briefcase. An awkward stance, half-stopped, half on-the-go so to speak. A gently critical image, but without malice. The client approved of the illustration, and "check man" joined a whole group of similar characters. One unintentional aspect of this particular drawing amused me when I had finished it. Drawn as it was in a group with many other characters, and as I had picked up speed at this junction, I realised afterwards that the linework had got jagged and angular in this particular drawing. But I liked this roughness very much. So this made me smile.