Ciaran Duffy, is a twenty-two year old Irish lad who is currently summering in Dundalk, Ireland. Come September will be making his way back to Dublin where he will be continuing to live out his formative years going to college to sharpen his skills as an artist and filmmaker. You will see that this young artist has his feet and thoughts firmly planted, but is not afraid to try new avenues and is excited to see where they might lead.

 

 

Ugly Sloth

What sort of art training have you had?
Art was always one of my favourite subjects in school but I suppose I didn't get any serious training till I was 17, I did a one-year art course to prepare a portfolio for applying to art colleges. Thanks to that, I got offered places in two Fine Art diploma courses and an interview for an Animation degree course I had applied for, almost on a whim. I went for the animation interview and, luckily enough, got accepted and it turned out to be the perfect course for me. I've done 3 years now with 1 more to go. I'll be graduating next may.


Lemur

 



Flutter By

We all have different people and influences us and inspire us. What are some of your inspirations?
I discover new artists from time to time and lose interest in other ones, I think everybody does that, but two people whose work never ceases to drive me nuts are Scott Morse and Dave McKean. They're two very different artists but they both push me to try new things and expect different things from myself. Other constant favourites are Ashley Wood, Candas Sisman and Darren Hopes, the last two I discovered through DeviantArt.
DeviantArt has definately been one of the biggest influences on me since I was introduced to it in 2004, it's one place where I've found so many incredibly talented artists and, on top of that, it's given me the chance to talk to them and read a bit about their work. Getting feedback along the way on my own work has helped a lot too.

Other websites that inspire me are netdiver.net and drawn.ca, I think everybody should check those sites regularly. It's amazing just how many incredibly talented people there are that you've never heard of.

That's where most of the technical inspiration comes from, otherwise I watch nature documentaries obsessively and listen to lots of music. I know people always say music inspires them but it's not surprising, music and reading are the only way to really take in and develop ideas without any prior visual connections so almost everything you think of is of your own imagination (depending on how descriptive the writer is). I read a lot but I read mostly fact.. about almost anything, though I should probably start reading some ficton again, I think too much of one thing gets either boring or stifling.

All of that mostly just accounts for visual inspiration but, like everybody else, my inspiration to create art in the first place just comes from how I see the world and how my brain works. That's what makes every honest artist unique.

 

What is it about animals that draws you to draw them?
I'm not sure really. I've always loved animals, nature documentaries, learning about exotic animals, seeing things I have very little chance of actually seeing for myself. Animals just fascinate me, any kind of animal facts or stories are interesting to me and David Attenborough is a hero of mine, everything he's ever done has shown the natural world for how amazing it really is. Whether in rainforests or back gardens, his programs just blow me away with the social lives and power structures in the animal world. I've always kind of wanted to be a wildlife photographer, I might've missed the boat on that one but I just never thought it was a serious career option for some reason.

Another reason I like drawing animals is that it can be a good way to whitewash a particular idea to make it seem innocuous. I think a painting I did called 'a walk in the park' is a good example. It's pretty popular and people mention how adorable it is but if you look at it, the concept behind it is disgusting, at least it is to me, but it's popular and easy to look at because it's cute. Using animals, and drawing them in a 'cute' way, makes it just a bit more sinister. On top of all that, a painting of a cute little animal makes almost anybody smile and I love that. That's one of the best reasons to make art that I can think of.

Koala

 

Balloonfish

 Your current series of paintings are very tiny. What are they painted on?
They're painted on foamboard. I found a big A1 sheet of it in college, brought it home and cut it up. The surface is great for keeping the colours vibrant and makes it easy to push paint all around it. After cutting it up for smaller paintings, I found a little scrap of it lying around and drew a porcupine fish on it. I gathered up a few other scraps and drew some more. After doing about 10 or so, I liked them and thought it'd be a good idea to leave them lying around in public. It seems like it'd be an interesting thing to find unexpectedly. I love the idea of free art. There's an English artist called Adam Neate who leaves paintings lying around in London and I'm sure he's not the first. I had so much fun doing them, I did another batch but I think I'm probably done with that for now.

I'm not picky about materials. I use bits of wood and cardboard I find, it helps to keep me from getting precious because I can't exactly waste a lump of MDF or a scrap of plastic. My mam and dad went on holiday and came back with a little 10x10cm canvas for me. It's gorgeous, it looks so nice as a little white square that I can't come up with anything worthy of it. That was about a year ago and it's still blank. It's been so long now that nothing will ever be good enough to use it for. It's just sitting there as a blank canvas and it's better-looking than anything I can do.
That's why I use scraps.

 

Are there any special considerations you need to think about when you work this small?
Not really. I think a bigger challenge is to paint or draw something so big you can't see all of it at one glance. I painted a fish on my wall that's about a metre square, I had to keep standing back, about 2 metres or so, to make sure it was going okay. With the little paintings it was just fun. I had all these little bits of foamboard, my paints and a desk light and I was just huddled in, inches away from them, painting them all at the same time. The only thing to consider is to not try to squeeze too much in. At that size it has to be fairly simple to make an immediate impact and, considering how it'll be seen, it'll need to be clear what it is from a distance. Hence, the simplistic designs and thin black marker outlines. It's a bit like designing a stamp, I suppose.

Cardinal

 

I am impressed at how you manage to pack so much into each painting so that when you look at them by themselves on the screen it is hard not to feel that they must be at least 40cm X 50cm. What is your secret when it comes to detail and texture.
Just, a small brush really. I'm not being sarcastic, I think if you tried it you'd be surprised at just how easy it is. I didn't find it any harder than painting, say, a 40x50 picture and my approach didn't change. One thing that definately helped at that size, is letting the paint do the work. I love the shapes that wet paint naturally creates so I like to just choose a colour and let the paint and water create interesting shapes. In most of my paintings, I start with a base layer of paint (usually applied with a sponge) and then just drip water on it and scrape it with a pallette knife and just keep going like that for a while; throwing water at it, tilting it so it all moves around the page (or whatever I'm painting on) and then gradually progress to the figurative elements of the image using less and less water as the painting progresses so that the whole image becomes solid and defined, if that's what I'm going for. I like the way this gives the natural textures that water creates as well as the ability to control the textures a bit more. Then, I usually grab either a black marker or use paint to tighten up one particular element of the picture to serve as a focus and lift it out of the mess that is the background. That's exactly how I did the small paintings. You can see it pretty clearly in the balloonfish and jellyfish paintings.

I don't think there's any secrets about how I work, it's pretty simple stuff. That's just what I like doing, I love colour and texture and sometimes just 2 colours together can be enough to make me happy. So, the way I work isn't technically difficult but I don't think that cheapens it.


Jellyfish

 



Okapi

Some of your animal paintings look like cartoons and other times they look like studies from nature. How do you decide what direction you will take a piece?
I know most of my animal drawings are simple and cartoonish but they all start out as more realistic sketches from reference. It's just that as I'm sketching I'll lean towards keeping it fairly natural or to go as far as simplifying it to a blobby charicature depending either on the animal's characteristics or my reason for drawing it in the first place. For example, there was something about the ugliness of a sloth I saw in the natural history museum that made me stop and open my sketchbook, it was so compelling to me that I thought it'd be a waste to lose that in the inevitably 'cute' charicature. In doing some sketches and paintings of an okapi, I realised I had never (and still haven't) done what I considered to be a sketch worthy of the animal so I don't want to do a cartoony one until I get it right first.On the other hand, I think some animals are begging to be stylised and simplified. The gorilla, for example, I just love how sometimes they look like 90% of their mass is in the shoulders, head and arms with these tiny little legs hanging on at the back. The Sperm whale's head usually makes up one third of the length of the whale so that was too good a fact to ignore. So, it depends on what it is I like about the animal or a particular photo I find, whether I try to keep it in some way realistic or just completely charcature it.

 

Little animals are a far cry from robots, Were you a fan of the Pete Townshend produced film, Iron Giant?
I have to admit, I liked it more at the time than I do now. I remember when I first saw it, I was really impressed by the design of the robot and how it almost looked like it was made in the 40s, not some shiny, silver machine but a huge, clunky collection of rusty nuts and bolts. To me, that's just so much more appealing. It's like if Thomas Edison had invented the robot. I love the idea of something as fantastic as a robot that looks hand-made, it makes it seem real. Up until then, I hadn't really spent much time imagining or drawing robots but when I was in second year I decided to use the Iron Giant character for an Animation project so I had to learn how to draw him, I was pushed for time with the project so I had to simplify the character which ended up in the kind of robots I draw now. I don't think we could mention the robots I've drawn without mentioning Ashley Wood's Popbot character, another robot design that has that same hand-built feel and I'd been reading 'popbot' during the 'Iron Giant run cycle' nightmare, so I suppose my robot is a cross between the two.

Green Bot

 

Internal

You have also done some wonderful abstract work in Photoshop. How do you feel painting on the computer compares to painting in real life?
Well, all my digital work starts life as a more traditional image. Either some random painted textures, chalk or a photo that I bring into PS and then start piling different images on top, I have a texture folder on my hard-drive that's just 800mbs of close-up photos of stuff. With working like that, it's important that I have a fairly complete idea in my head of how the final image should look. Otherwise, it would just spiral away from what I wanted and I'd end up with nothing useful to show for a few hours work... that's happened a few times. So I'm a bit more reluctant to just watch what happens when I'm working digitally. I've never made anything in PS from a blank image to final image using only the paintbrush, I use PS more as a method of creating collages but with much more control, a lot more textures and photos to choose from and more options for altering colours, cropping, opacities and stuff like that. So, I don't know how it compares to painting in real life because that's not really how I use it. If I want to do a painting, I'll do it by hand, If I want to use photos or just want that digital aesthetic than I'll use PS. There's pros and cons to every way of working but I don't think they should be pitted against each other, there's no point. I think it's great to have that option and I don't think you should be solely digital or traditional if there's something you can do about it. It's nothing to be afraid of.

 

If you had to choose what medium would you pick?
As long as I don't ever actually have to pick, I'd probably choose traditional media. There's so many great things about traditional media, photography, digital-painting and digital 3D but nothing makes me happier than real paint, getting paint all over my hands and face, accidentally drinking paint water, destroying a picture by going too far and not having ctrl+z at my fingertips and the effect that giving somebody the original painting can have.

Using paints and pencils never really feels like hard work to me, that's not to say I don't work hard or care about my paintings but I just don't feel any stress when I'm doing them. I know a lot of very serious artists 'suffer for their art' and disregard those who don't but all my paintings are borne out of a love of painting and it just makes it very easy to do. With digital works, I can get frustrated when things aren't working out so I'd give that up first. Although, it's one of those questions, like "would you rather be blind or deaf?". It's never going to come up but some people act like you should be one thing or the other. It's crap. what could be better than being comfortable with almost every method? Then when you have an idea you can choose the best way to realise it.

Seasons

 

Holy Grail

Tell me about your painting called Holy Grail.
Holy Grail was a reaction to a sudden turn of events. I was going to do a painting for my girlfriend when it suddenly turned out that an artist we both love offered to do a painting for her. That completely threw me off course, I knew I wasn't capable of anything nearly as good as this artist's work so the only option I had was to do something completely different. That's why I chose to do it using collage and in a way I hadn't really done before. The image itself was inspired by her. A common theme in art and films she likes, and in her own work, is strength and independence in children. Holy Grail simply deals with the power of the child to illuminate and fend off the problems adults have or invent for themselves.

I'm sorry that's not an overly in-depth explanation but it's a lot more than I usually say about my work. One of my favourite things about creating art is creating the opportunity for multiple readings and observing that, if it's possible. I really believe that if somebody looks at something I've made and sees a meaning in it that's a million miles from what I was thinking, then they're not wrong. I'm afraid that if I post an image and an explanation, nobody would bother deciding what it might mean, or what the point is, if the answer is just there from the artist himself.

I don't like when artists preach and I'm deeply suspicious of anybody who uses art as a soapbox for their half-baked political theories or philosophies. I want people to see things in my work that I hadn't considered when I was making it.

 

You seem equally adept or comfortable with abstract as you do with your more representative work. What are your thoughts on how those two directions are important to you.
I'm not sure that I'm as comfortable with abstract work yet but I do know that I love it. I haven't been making abstract images for very long but when I do I enjoy it and it's really satisfying when it works out. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is make an image that's clearly 'about something', whether it's a character doing something or using fairly transparent symbolism, sometimes just colour and shape is enough to express whatever it was that made me want to start the image in the first place. I've made a 3 or 4 short films now and the only one I like is the most recent one, my only abstract film. There's a little bit of pressure to have a clear story or meaning and sometimes I think it's better to ignore that and to be confident that colour, shape and composition can be enough.

On the other hand, sometimes the concept behind an image pivots on the imagery in it so a more figurative approach is better. It just depends on the idea, I think. Finally though, I love good illustration and it's something I'd love the opportunity to do so abstract art isn't really the answer there. So, the two different ways just give a bit of balance to keep me from getting frustrated.

1123

 

Twenty Percent

 Twenty Percent is a great example of how you can dig in come up with a powerful minimalist abstract composition. What can you tell me about this painting?
Self-confidence has played a big part in a lot of my stuff and twentypercent is a pretty good example. I had an idea which eventually became a digital piece called 'eleventwentythree'. So I wanted to start with a red chalk background. I got a big page, filled it with chalk and took photos of it. Those photos eventually became the background for 1123 but before I threw away the page of chalk, I grabbed some white and drew a line across the bottom fifth of the page. I didn't throw the page out though, I really liked looking at it but I thought it was just too simple to bother showing it to anybody else or even to call it a finished piece. After a while, though, I just thought that I like it, it makes me happy and, as far as I'm concerned, it's finished.

That was important for me, to accept that not every image has to take days or weeks of thought and hours of painting, that it's as finished as 1123 or Television or any other paintings, digital or traditional. I always admire, in other artists, the ability to know when to stop. I think it takes courage and self-confidence to know when to stand back and call an image finished, no matter how bare it is, if it expresses what you wanted it to. I think it's interesting that there's 2 weeks between me making twentypercent and uploading it for people to see it. It's hard to find that self-belief sometimes.

 

As you are still in the developmental stages of your career as an artist, but have obviously made some strides towards a real serious direction in your work, what advice might you give to someone just starting out that is thinking of taking up the life of an artist?
Like you said, I'm still a student. I've a long way to go to get to doing what I want to do for a living, I've a lot of mistakes to make and I'm still asking professional artists for advice. I think the only thing that I'm certain is good advice is get your hands (or your eyes) on as much art as you can and whatever it is that you do (draw, paint, digital or traditional) do it a lot. If it's what you want to do for a living then it's going to take a lot of hard work, you're not going to get work just because you have potential. There's a million people who want to be professional artists.
One more thing, one of my tutors (who's a filmmaker and works in the animation industry) told me that the minute you chose art as a future you waved goodbye to job security. That stuck with me and it's probably only going to resonate more as time goes on and as I struggle to find work. Why would anybody choose to be an artist?


Blue Martin

 

 

 



Bunny

 

 

To see more of Ciaran's work go to his Deviantart page.

 

 

 

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