Over the
course of the last 6 years not only are we striving to cover great music but to cover the wider
community involved in the music we adore. It's not just bands, its label
people, engineers, and very importantly its artists and illustrators too.
I love a
great album cover and visiting the local record store in my teens every Saturday
made me notice album covers even more than I had before. More recently one of my favourite album
covers was also for one of our favourite bands at THE SLUDGELORD,
none other than Grizzlor and their fantastic debut full
length “Disastroid”. The
artist responsible goes under the moniker of NerdGore, a truly gifted
individual with an insane eye for detail in his work. And I am beyond pleased
that he accepted an invitation to talk to us. I truly hope you all enjoy
Could you introduce yourself and offer a quick
bio? What media do you work in?
My real name is Rich, but I ply my trade as an illustrator under the
moniker NerdGore. I grew up in the UK but moved to Australia about 5 years ago.
I currently live in a rural town called Bellingen on the East Coast with my
wife, three kids and a collection of various animals. My route to becoming an
illustrator has been some-what unconventional, given that I had such a shit
time at art college that I promptly dropped out, gave up drawing and tried to
become a horror writer instead... it wasn't pretty. I didn't start drawing
again until I came to Australia and couldn't get a 'normal' job, I posted my
efforts on instagram and was blown away by the response and it has just kind of
snowballed from there. The vast majority of my work is produced very simply
with paper, brush and ink. For colour work, I prefer watercolour over inks, but
I also do digital colour with photoshop.
Could you highlight some of the musicians/bands who you've
created artwork for and what that process is like?
I'm lucky enough to have worked with bands like Black Dahlia Murder, Municipal
Waste, Exmortus, Gatecreeper, Ohhms, Grizzlor, Clowns (Aus), Ratlord (Ger)
and others. I would say that nearly all the bands I work for have given me very
loose briefs like 'something satanic' or 'a bunch of undead warriors' and this
really works for me. I usually respond to that with working drawings and
thumbnails and between myself and the client we hammer out a decent working
rough. I then light-box my own rough onto larger paper and produce the tight
pencils. I normally go back to the band at this point as it's still easy to
make changes and then once they're happy I ink directly over the pencils and
produce the final illustration. A number of the bands I've worked for, I've
already been a fan of and know their music, but if the band is new, I'll always
listen to some of their music to get a feel of what sort of illustration might
suit them.
 |
| Grizzlor, "Disastroid" |
In what ways does music influence your creative
process? Do you have "go to" bands or albums when working?
I have a slightly odd approach to listening to music whilst working. When
producing pencils, I always prefer listening to punk or thrash bands (Early Graves, Venom Prison, Power
Trip, Bloodlust, Barbarian, etc) so that I stay fast and loose and
don't get too obsessed with detail. Then for inking, I like to slow it right
down and listen to a lot doom and sludge, much heavier music (Dopethrone, Chrch, Elder, Hollow
Leg, Sunburster, etc) because it requires a bit more patience and a
steadier hand. Then again, I often reach points where I overdose on metal and
just spend periods listening to old Fat Wreck Chords albums from the early 90's. The pop-punk
scene, along with skateboarding, exploded in the UK right when I was a teenager
and it was my first proper music love; listening to Snuff, Propaghandi or Lagwagon is like wrapping
up in a warm blanket haha.
So when a label or artist
commissions you to start a fresh piece of work, what is the process for you? Do
they come to you with pre-conceived ideas at all?
As above, it is generally a loose brief but
most bands have a good idea of what they want and just allow the illustrator to
fill in the details. I did have one experience where the brief was super tight
and detailed and it was probably my least successful piece of work. It caused a
lot of redrawing and tweaking and made it hard to keep a lid on all the
changes. I'm sure there are illustrators that excel at this type of brief, but
I think my best work comes when I have freedom to use my imagination a bit and
invent some characters or worlds.
Are there any artists, visual or otherwise, who
distinctly influenced your style, medium, or process?
The absolute single biggest influence on me as a person, let alone
illustrator, would be the British comic 2000ad. I'm the proud owner of a near
complete collection (they recently passed issue 2000...), have Judge Death
tattooed on my leg and it is absolutely at the top of my 'people-I-want-to-work-for-bucket-list'.
2000ad is fairly legendary these days and its cultural significance is well
documented, but for me personally, it was an art training course. From the age
of 8 I was copying whole pages of art from my heroes (Mike McMahon, Simon Bisley,
Steve Dillon, Glenn Fabry, Colin McNeil, etc) and it's most significant
creator, Pat Mills, shaped many of my opinions towards authority, religion and
the environment, although I didn't really appreciate it at the time.
In terms of process, my first exposure to how comics were made was from
Conventions in the UK and I would hang around at the art booths of all the
2000ad guys. In those days, it was much more informal and you could watch them
doing stuff, have a long conversation with them and show them your art work. I
got great advice from guys like Henry Flint, Siku, Greg Staples and Peter
Doherty and it pretty much meant I was set from an early age to pencil
everything and then ink using brush or dip pen. I still work like that now.
Who are some of your
biggest influences within your field?
Instagram is running shit hot at the moment
with amazing artists. It's actually quite scary how many good artists just appear
out of nowhere each day on Instagram, definitely encourages you to keep raising
your game. One of the guys who impresses me time and time again is Scott
Wygman, he's an awesome dude who recently did a killer cover for a GWAR comic book and his
work is steeped in Heavy Metal and RPG gaming, but also draws influence from
Anime and stuff like Calvin and Hobbes. It's hard to exactly describe his style
and it is very unique, but one scroll through his feed always encourages me to
loosen up and stay imaginative (check him out @darkwizard_bezerker).
The most metal artist I know, is without a
doubt Daniel Shaw(@shawillustrations). His work is incredibly detailed and dripping
with everything that is cool about underground metal illustration, from decaying
skulls, to vomiting priests, to haunted graveyards; this guy can draw it all.
His work really influences me to push the detail and never settle for
short-cuts and just draw the fuck out of everything. Lastly, the grand-daddy of
all Metal meets Gaming illustration; Skinner. This guy has been a massive influence
on my work. When I first moved to Australia and was sitting around doing
nothing, a feature in Pork Magazine on him was the thing that got me back at
the drawing desk. He definitely influenced me to just draw shit that I loved or
found funny and make art for the enjoyment, rather than to spin a buck.
You're quite obviously a
big metal fan. Was album artwork always an aspiration for you? What were some
of your favourite covers growing up, and do you have a favourite from your own
portfolio of work at all?
I am a big metal fan, but I would say that I'm a late convert. I was much
more into punk as a teenager and came to metal in my mid-20s. Because of that,
I don't have that deep connection to a lot of metal album covers that you would
forge as a teenager. However, there are a lot of parallels between a lot the
fantasy stuff that influenced me as a kid and heavy metal. One of my single
favourite pieces of artwork, is Michael Whelan's painting Stormbringer which I
remember vividly from my dad's Michael Moorcock collection. Of course, this
later became the cover to Cirith Ungols great album Frost and Fire but I knew
it first from the Elric book. Alongside that, I used to hang out in video shops
as a kid and the amazing covers always stuck in my mind. Stuff like
Deathstalker by Boris Vajello blew my mind and also influenced many a heavy
metal album cover. Then, as always, it comes back to 2000ad... so many of those
artists started out doing album covers; Simon Bisley's Mortal Sin cover and an near
unknown Kev Walker doing Autopsy's Mental Funeral cover.
As for my own work, I think the original Corehammer t-shirt I did is
possibly my favourite. It was early on when I started getting commission work
and it took me ages but the response to it was great. Corehammer is a blog and
facebook group that focuses on Tabletop Gaming and Hardcore Punk music and by
doing that shirt, I got to meet a whole bunch of cool people who I've stayed in
contact with. I've since done a bunch of shirts for them (and their sister arm
DungeonPunx) and we are always planning all sorts of stuff from zines to RPG
supplements.
There have been several blogs and articles calling
attention to appropriated or "repurposed" artwork, generally taken
without credit to the original artist, specifically in the world of "music
artwork". Could you speak a little about the current attention to this
issue and your feelings on artistic credit in general?
I'll try not to get too ranty here, haha. I really don't like shit like
this and, to me, it ties in with the rise of digital art. That's not to say
digital art is bad, just that it has provided a whole set of tools that make it
easier than ever before to rip people off and make money off someone else's
hard work. For years, people have been influenced by other artists and my
drawing board has a ton of art books around it so my all my art heroes are
within reach if I need a shot of inspiration. But, actually copying artwork
directly and re-skinning it as something new is fundamentally wrong and
entirely pointless. With stuff like this, it just confirms to me that a lot of
people aren't interested in learning how to draw and that speed has overtaken
everything. Personally, I think a lot of time saving and cheats that can be
done with photoshop, etc skips out essential steps that make you a better
artist; sure, Google Sketch Up can do perspective for you, but if you learn how
to do it, then only your imagination can limit you. The end result might not be
perfect but it will have a ton of personality and character and that is way
more important.
Do you still have anything
left that you want to achieve in your chosen art form? Maybe a group you would
like to do a cover for, or another artist that you would love to collaborate
with?
I feel like I've only just scratched the
surface to be honest and there is heaps I'd like to achieve. As for an ultimate
art goal it will always be 2000ad and more specifically Judge Dredd. If I could
work on even just a one-off 5 pager in 2000ad, I would die a happy man!
Finally, where can fans view and purchase your work?
Feel free to promote any musical/film/literary/etc. projects you're involved in
as well.
The best place to find me is on instagram @artofnerdgore
Thanks for having me!
