Q & A About Icons of Rock
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| Author | Alani Jimenez |
|---|---|
| Subject | Don Pinsent, Icons of Rock, Best Studio Piece (2019) |
| Genre | Interview |
| Published | EF Issue 2020.1 |
Publication date | February 2020 |
| Pages | 24-26 |
| Website | Full Issue PDF |
This article is a Q & A with Don Pinsent about his 2019 Best Studio Piece Award winning work, Icons of Rock. It was written by Alani Jimenez and appears in Exaggerated Features Issue 2020.1 on pages 24-26.
Article Transcript
At #ISCAcon28, Don Pinsent’s Studio Piece of the Year, “Icons of Rock,” a collage of caricatures of 141 iconic rock stars, inspired many questions. In this interview, Don provides us with some of the answers.
Alani Jimenez: This piece is Incredible! What do you call it?
Don Pinsent: Thanks! This is called Icons of Rock. I think you’ll be able to see why.
AJ: What medium did you use?
DP: This is all drawn digitally, in Sketchbook. I drew each face in a separate, individual file, then assembled them all into one big collage.
AJ: What inspired you to draw so many musicians?
DP: Well, back when I first started the initial sketching in 2011, I had just finished a similar collage of caricatures of the characters from the TV show Lost, and the thought occurred to me how cool it would be if that piece could be just the first in a series of collages all in the same style. I started trying to think of what other properties would lend themselves to big group assemblies like that, and rock music seemed a good choice, what with all the great, unique faces there are in that field.
AJ: How did you decide where to place each face? What was the planning process like?
DP: All I knew for sure when I first started deciding who was going to go where was that I wanted the Beatles right in the center. I’m a huge Beatles fan, and in my mind, all rock music centers around them. Then, I knew I wanted Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne near George Harrison, as they all formed The Traveling Wilburys together. After them, it was just a matter of placing them randomly until they all fit. You may notice that The Beach Boys were the only band I drew all together as a group as opposed to drawing each one from a separate reference photo. I don’t know why exactly that was, except that particular photo just seemed to typify that band pretty well. Once I had drawn them all together like that, it seemed natural, somehow, to place them down at the bottom of the image. Oh, also, I knew from the start that I wanted Elvis featured prominently at the top, in his rightful place as the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
AJ: And how long did it take from start to finish?
DP: The whole thing took about eight years, although only about the last three years were spent really pursuing it in earnest. Up until some time in 2016, I had just been doing a little here and there from time to time, sometimes leaving it for months before starting up again.
AJ: Throughout the process, what did you say to yourself to keep motivated?
DP: I think my main two motivating thoughts were, first: “Don’t let this be yet another in a long list of projects you start and never finish,” and second: “This has to be good enough to impress your fellow ISCA members, since they were the ones who inspired you to really put your all into it.”
AJ: What was the most challenging part of putting this piece together?
DP: The most challenging part of the whole process didn’t even have much to do with drawing, it was deciding who to include. My first thought, way back in 2011, was to just make a collage of musicians I personally liked. But then I thought I should make something that would have a wider appeal, so I knew I had to base the choices more on who really qualified as iconic, regardless of whether or not I was a fan. So that meant I had to cut a few personal favorite musicians that I had already sketched. Then I consulted with a few friends of mine who knew more about music than I did. I also knew I had to stick to artists I felt qualified as “Rock,” and not “Pop,” because if I started getting into that field, it would be impossible to keep the list down to a reasonable number of faces. So that’s why some truly iconic pop stars like Michael Jackson aren’t in there. Anyway, at one point, the list of people I was considering including was over 250 names long, which I knew was going to be more work than I wanted to do, so I had to start thinking about what “iconic” really meant, and who I could cut from the list based on that. It was surprisingly difficult and mentally taxing.
AJ: What was the most fun part?
DP: Just the drawing. Especially when I would come up with a caricature that I really felt nailed the likeness, pushed the exaggerations further than I was used to, AND had a strong sense of three-dimensionality to it. Whenever I was able to satisfactorily hit all three of those criteria in a caricature, it was super rewarding!
AJ: Did you listen to each artist’s music while drawing each face?
DP: No, I have to admit, there are quite a few artists pictured in this collage of whom I am not a fan. But there certainly were times when I happened to have some artist’s music playing at the same time I was sketching them.
AJ: How long have you been doing caricatures?
DP: I first started practicing the art of caricature when I was a teenager, probably about 15 years old. I was reading Mad Magazine a lot at that time, and since I had been into drawing ever since I was a small child, the artwork especially spoke to me. I first started doing caricatures for money in the summer of 1996.
AJ: When you started doing caricatures did you think you would be able to achieve such an accomplishment?
DP: I don’t think the possibility of accomplishing something on the scale of Icons of Rock ever occurred to me back in my teens, as I’ll admit I had let myself buy into the popular notion that caricature didn’t really count as art, that it was just a novelty meant for theme parks and humor magazines. It wasn’t until I was introduced to the work of Sebastian Krüger (also in the summer of ‘96) that I realized how wrong that way of thinking was!
AJ: Who are some of your main inspirations for doing caricatures? You mentioned Sebastian Krüger, and the artists from Mad Magazine, who else would you care to name, that starting artists should know about, who helped you to keep your motivation while doing this piece?
DP: Fluck & Law (creators of the Spitting Image puppets), Jan Op de Beeck, and more recently, Anthony Geoffroy. Geoffroy’s work, especially, reminded me that, aside from hitting likenesses and exaggeration, caricatures should also be fun to look at! And a HUGE amount of inspiration has come to me lately by way of attending ISCA conventions and watching people work there! As I mentioned earlier, that was a real driving force while I was creating Icons of Rock! I started drawing it, as I said, in 2011, but after attending my first convention in 2015, I started redrawing a lot of my earlier sketches, trying to improve the likenesses and to get out of the comfort zone I had previously settled into where my level of exaggeration was concerned.
AJ: ISCA does have a way of keeping us all on our toes and humble in our artistic voyage. Now that you have won 1st place for Studio Piece, what is next?
DP: Ha ha! Next is the Golden Nosey!... Okay, maybe not, but I mostly aim to just keep improving. And as I said, I would like to continue creating more collages in this series. I have a few different properties in mind that I think would be suitable. I’m also planning to self-publish a book on the topic of Icons of Rock fairly soon as well.
AJ: Have you considered writing tutorials and/or books on caricatures?
DP: I had never really considered writing any instructional books on caricature, since there are already so many of them out there, and I wasn’t sure what more I could say. But just last year, an angle did occur to me that I do think could make for a worthwhile book, so I may start on that in 2020 as well.
AJ: When did you decide Icons of Rock was finished?
DP: Well, I did all the rough sketches and assembled them before starting any of the final versions, so it was easy to make the call. When I had finished the last caricature, and added all the little space fillers in between, that it was finally, once and for all, DONE!
AJ: Congratulations on your 1st place award for Studio Piece. This is an epic piece, of which I am happy to own a copy. Thanks for your influence to the caricature world.
DP: Well, thank YOU for owning a copy, and for your kind words. If I truly do have any influence on the world of caricature, I will be extremely honored!
Prints of “Icons of Rock” are available for sale. Please contact Don Pinsent (don@caricaturesbydon.com) to inquire.
Follow Don Pinsent on Instagram @caricaturesbydon.
Follow Alani Jimenez on Instagram @mr.alanij.
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