Artist of the Day: Joe Sparrow

Joe Sparrow

Location:
London, UK
Primary media:
Digital [Photoshop, Flash]
Education:
Kingston University [BA (hons) Illustration/Animation, 2010]
Major projects:
The Hunter comic [author/illustrator, Nobrow, 2015]
Tarot Series ongoing personal illustrations
Tharsis Sleeps music video directed by Tom Bunker & Nicos Livesey [animator]
Dungeons & Drawings ongoing collaborative illustration project with Blanca Martinez
What is the most valuable piece of artistic advice you have ever received, and from who?
“This is kind of weird, but there’s a speech by John Cleese where he talks about comedic writing and there was this thing that stuck with me about having two ‘modes’ of working creatively. I think he described it as having a ‘playful’ mode, in which you can be totally completely relaxed and experimental, and also a ‘focused’ mode where you’re super inflexible and rule-governed, and how good work usually requires a balance of these two. Like you need the space to be really playful and stupid and make mistakes at the beginning of a project because you need that freedom for the good ideas to develop, but then you need to be disciplined and consistent in how you go about actually bringing it to completion. It’s not a balance I have the hang of at all (I think I spend way too much time in the second mode), but it struck me as a really elegant idea and it’s really influenced the way I try to approach work.”
More:
Tumblr/Website/Tarot Tuesday/Dungeons and Drawings