Stuart Kolakovic has been with us from the very beginning, which makes it all the more surprising that he is the latest addition to our roster of Artist’s Profiles.
The ever busy, dumbfoundingly talented illuskater (yup, that’s the right spelling, he’s an avid skater and illustrator) was of course responsible for the first issue’s cover and has since been involved with many subsequent issues and let’s not forget the groundbreaking Graphic Cosmogony. We recently peeled back the cobweb ridden curtains of his dimly lit 15th century Serbian Orthodox monastic cell to ask him what keeps him going and this was his sermon.
I live in the Midlands; home to Black Sabbath and Industrial pollution. I find Illustration can be quite confining; having to adhere to quick turnarounds or very specific briefs. So I try to indulge myself as much as possible with other, more personal projects in my spare time.
A lot of my work is inspired by my interest in Eastern European folk art, which is something I discovered whilst researching a project about my family history. When I’m not drawing, I enjoy making music, reading, skating, complaining, feeling guilty for not working and pissing my friends off.
My working process is pretty stressful. I get very uncomfortable when I hear other artists talk about how much fun they have drawing. I feel the idea, narrative or message I’m trying to communicate through the commissioned drawing is the most important part of image making. So I spend a lot of time trying to hone down exactly what I’m trying to say using pages of thumbnail sketches until a solid image starts to form. This is fleshed out on nasty cheap A4 copy paper, inked up with a brush, scanned in and then coloured in on Photoshop.