Ralph Steadman

Earlier today, the brilliant Ralph Steadman spoke to a lecture hall full of students and staff - including myself - via Skype; meaning he could show us around his studio and all the drawings he's done!

As random and bonkers as he is, he did tell us a bit about his past:
He started by saying he originally wanted to be an aircraft pilot, but he's always had a fascination with drawing, and conveying his inner self on paper.
In his early days he attended life drawing sessions, a class of 26 where the teacher would look at your work, and instead of drawing over the top of it they'd draw a new sketch in the corner of the paper. This would have given the sketcher a comparison between his work and the corner sketch, to see for himself what needs to be changed (a good learning tool!)
He worked in an art department office in London, where he had to come up with 10 ideas a day, then choose one of them to draw. This sounds like a good way to get you used to drawing and thinking in a creative frame of mind constantly.
Later he discovered that he could take a polaroid photo and distort the images. This idea captivated him, so he made a book about "Paranoid Polaroids".

He gave us a lot of advice while he was talking, one of the things that stuck out to me was: you must get first hand experience. For example: "Journalists don't write a story without extensive research - they become the story" which applies to artists as well.

Even a brilliantly famous man is saying it's important to find references, to become the references for your animations and find out everything you can about what you're trying to make.

"There's no such thing as a mistake, a mistake is an opportunity to do something else." so he doesn't recommend rubbing any lines out because it's "part of the thought process".
Following these quotes he told us for most of his work he doesn't sketch anything out first, he just goes for it with the splatters his ink makes and goes from there. Sometimes he'll know what he wants to create, but lets the ink lead the way to determine how it looks visually.

"Illustration is a diagram" which he thinks are terrible, so he prefers to call his work drawings. Many people say he is a cartoonist, but he states that he only uses the cartoons to emphasise his drawings (as he says about all really good cartoons).

He doesn't like technology too much; especially if you create a drawing from scratch on there. It's good if you paint it on paper first, then scan it in to the computer to continue working on it, because at least you still have the proper brush strokes!

Charity Work

Animal Farm

Alice in Wonderland

Here's the trailer shown at the start of the lecture, based on Ralph Steadman "For No Good Reason":



Hearing all of his advice and learning techniques has been really interesting, especially in person! (or through a screen!) It was a privilege to listen to him, and get a sneaky peak of his studio space!

He left us with a final bit of advice, which I'll leave you with:

"Dedicate your life to making mistakes. Don't be harsh, just be objective and kind to people. Hope for better things. Pledge to yourself that you'll do your best."