Artist interview Jon Mcnaught

Jon Mcnaught

With the interview with Jon Mcnaught who creates graphic novels will using screen printing.

What he has done as a career is a mixture is:

• Storyteller illustration
• Commercial work
• Comic work
• Magazine work for London book reviews and New York times

He has also self publishing with books called Dockwood and Nobrow . With this he told us what helped him develop his style and career.  He started by telling us that his influence such as Hiroshige who used woodblock printing to create his Japanese traditional prints. Edward Bawden use to uses linocuts to create his drawings but now he uses traditional inking with photoshop. These are just a few artists that peak his interest in print design. But he also got influenced by Raymond Briggs who created the snowman. He said that he liked that this story had no narrative but the pictures told the story instead. Jon Mcnaught said that he wanted to create something like this in his work. He was also influenced by a comic artist called Tom Gauld who create simplistic comics.

The next thing that Jon Mcnaught told me was his process of creating a comic himself. He takes a sketchbook where he goes. He sometimes does doodle from observation and then creates a story out of them but sometimes he mostly creates notes of what he plans to do. He is also influenced by everyday objects which he sometimes apply his comics. He also  does take photos for his references.

He told us how he developed his art style which he started with screen printing by using three colours. He added tone to his image by overall the colours to create a new tone. But know he creates the outline and tone by using ink onto his sketch pages which he refines with the ink, then the pages with colour in photoshop.  He also told us that original started off with just creating illustrations by chance but with time he just developed into the graphic novel section. With the colours he also said that he trying to express the mood of what happen in the scene.

He finished the interview by giving me advice on who to be illustrator:

• Publishers come to you
• Set a project every month to produce a comic 

Jon Mcnaught Graphic Novel work