|
 |
Colin Hood
Colin Hood was brought up on the sunny Dagenham council estate where he always had a keen interest in pencils. Despite failing art at school he has managed to get two degrees under his belt, BSC Product Design & a BA in Graphic Design. Since then he has worked as an visualiser, drawing storyboards for some of the worlds biggest ad agencies, then working as an Art Director in some of those big ad agencies, and now has turned his skills to freelance illustration where he works at home in a little office built in his attic in Romford, England. Colin's favourite way to work is with a pencil, illustrator & a large amount of photoshop to create grand images which mix humour, character design & a waft of realism. Colin's influences are girls, bmx, surf culture, rock music, punk, mods & old rusty volkswagens.
Interview
Moving from a full time design job to a freelance career must have been quite a shock to the system. How has your work/life balance changed? To be honest the first couple of weeks was a bit of a struggle, it’s a huge leap from full time employment to freelance. One of the biggest changes is that I work from home now & so there’s not as much need to leave the house, which in turn mean’s that you don’t speak to as many people. That said, I now see that as a bit of a blessing, none of that awkward small talk whilst making your tea in the morning, I only deal with people I want to deal with. I save all that precious time previously wasted on commuting & don’t have to faff around doing mundane office jobs. On the whole the work life balance is brilliant, we are in quiet times at the moment so I won’t pretend it’s easy money, you have to make a lot of contacts to pay the bills, but I pretty much arrange work around my personal life now.
What advice would you offer to others who may feel they are stuck in a job that doesn’t let them realise their full creative potential? I thought about going freelance for a couple of years but was always hesitant. Two years ago advertising was booming, the money was good & the place I was working at was generally 9 til 5. It was hard to leave that lifestyle & the thought of struggling to pay the bills was scary as all hell. The recession made the choice a lot easier, work became slow, clients slashed their budgets & so wanted their stuff rushed or wanted less to save their small change, whilst agencies constantly try to work differently (usually faster, allowing less time for creativity) to make more profit. I wasn’t doing the work that I liked so much & so I knew it was time to down tools & get out. Personally I found that working for yourself allows you time to learn new techniques & to work more on the things you love, whether that’s crafting something for a client or a personal project. If you have a certain style, you can spent time developing it & eventually client’s will seek you out because they like it. Which of course has a knock on effect People will see your illustrations & know distinctively that it’s yours. It’s almost like building a brand for yourself.
Is it easy to keep yourself motivated and organised when the only person you have to answer to is yourself? As for organisation, what’s that? No, really I’m not that bad at it, I tend to remember work things quite well, I can take a brief in a few simple notes & a bit of reference material & off I go! It must be the way my brains wired because unfortunately my memory doesn’t stretch as far in my personal life, the amount of times I stand around in Tesco wondering what I’m looking for is unbelievable, as I’m sure my wife would tell you! The paper work is probably the hardest, tracking invoices & the like. I’ve taken to writing everything down now in a book so I can keep everything in order, the last thing I want is an angry tax inspector knocking on my door!
What methods do you use to create your work? I hand draw most things first, I feel computers have killed off part of my craft, there’s nowt like scratching pencil across paper & it’s a better way for developing shapes! started out working in an illustration agency drawing scamps, visuals & storyboards, everything was hand drawn & coloured. I prefer to colour stuff on the mac now though, everything gets scanned, I do a lot of vector work in illustrator & then a bit (sometimes a lot) of airbrushing, retouching & adding textures or photography in photoshop
What inspires you when creating your artwork? That really depends, a lot of commercial work is quite matter of fact. A client comes to you & gives you both a subject & a style. It’s always nice to delve a bit deeper, sometimes there’s a hidden fact that can be used in the illustration is some way. My personal projects generally are based on the stuff that interests & surrounds me, I’ve always been into Surf culture & BMX so that feature’s a fair bit but I also draw inspiration things I see during the day, the way someone is dressed or even the way they might be standing. The world is full of visual stimulation you just have to look.
Aside from illustration and design what other interests and hobbies do you have? I try to ride my BMX as much as possible, though I am a bit of a fair weather rider. I’m interested in old Volkwagens so I go to a lot of vw shows throughout the year & the odd hotrod or custom car show. I quite like mooching round the markets in London too, I love Spitalfields, Brick lane & Camden. I’ve always been interested in graffiti & tattoo design. I try to get down to Cornwall at least once a year, sometimes I surf, although I spend more time falling off than actually standing up, but I love the culture down there, everything is far more relaxed. More recently I’ve spent a fair bit of time building a new office in my attic, it’s nearly finished now so hopefully that’ll free up more time for everything else!
What plans do you have for the future? Is the freelance move part of a bigger picture? I think I’m going to keep on with the freelance. It gives me more time to work on my Apple’s Yard project, which is a book of personal illustrations. In the long run I want to develop my style more & maybe move into prints or even t-shirts. The thing with freelance illustration is that you can work anywhere in the world. My past career has always tied me to London or big cities where advertising thrives. I’m hoping that eventually ‘going freelance’ will allow me to move out to somewhere near the coast.
If you weren’t illustrating what other job could you imagine yourself doing? That’s a hard one! Drawing has basically been the only thing I’ve ever been able to do! I worked in shops when I was a student, which has always made me wonder about owning my own surf/ |
Links
The Colin Hood Show
|
Portfolio
|
| All artwork on this site is copyright protected under the AMMO Magazine brand or remains property of the individual artists who have kindly granted us permission to use their work. Permission must be sought before reproducing any artwork on this site via the appropriate copyright holder. |