Interview: How Chris Hagan Defers Digital to Create Completely Handcrafted Illustrations

Illus­tra­tor Chris Hagan hon­ors an ana­log way of cre­at­ing imagery. He prefers work­ing by hand to craft col­lages rich in tex­ture and with a fan­tas­ti­cal sub­ject. And in a field where an illus­tra­tor’s career can go in any num­ber of direc­tions, Chris has cho­sen the fine art path. He has edi­to­r­i­al and pic­ture book clients, yes, but he also main­tains a gallery pres­ence and shows orig­i­nal art. In doing this, he has avoid­ed dig­i­tal tech­niques in his pictures—unless it’s to pre­pare some­thing for print. Work­ing this way, he says, “enables me to exhib­it and sell my work.”

I spoke with Chris about his career and his for­ays into social media (he recent­ly got an Insta­gram account)—but why you should­n’t let your fol­low­ers reflect your tal­ent. Scroll down to read my interview.

What was your artis­tic jour­ney, and how did it shape your cur­rent career?
After com­plet­ing a degree in Fine Art I was unsure which direc­tion to go with my art, then in 2012 I began sell­ing prints as an illus­tra­tor and from there I began to get involved in oth­er areas of illus­tra­tion, such as edi­to­r­i­al com­mis­sions and more recent­ly, pic­ture books. I still pro­duce fine art­work (main­ly oil paint­ings) which I exhib­it from time to time and sell pri­vate­ly and some­times repro­duce for prints. The fine art work has less of a nar­ra­tive to it and is more focused on a series of works, rather than one-off illustrations.

Your work fea­tures a vari­ety of media. How do you decide what type of media is appro­pri­ate? What is your process for work­ing in collage? 
For my col­lage illus­tra­tion-based work, I don’t use cut col­lage from mag­a­zines, it is more a tech­nique where I will cre­ate mark mak­ing on paper and use this to cre­ate an image and some­times a com­po­si­tion. Build­ing up my image in lay­ers, and mak­ing lots of prepara­to­ry sketch­es beforehand.

Lots of peo­ple have asked if it is dig­i­tal, and although I do use Pho­to­shop to pre­pare them for print. I don’t cre­ate my work dig­i­tal­ly, it is all pro­duced by hand, this also enables me to exhib­it and sell my work. For my fine art, I gen­er­al­ly use oil and acrylic and have begun to incor­po­rate some col­lage ele­ments into this work, which cre­ates a rich­er image by use of the oil paint which is longer dry­ing and can be manip­u­lat­ed more than water-based paint, these works often tend to be quite multi-layered.

Many of your art­works have a sto­ry­book feel. What is the inspi­ra­tion behind your work? What are you look­ing at for inspi­ra­tion currently?
Some­times it can be a sto­ry, like my illus­tra­tion for Angela Carter’s “Com­pa­ny of Wolves”, and oth­er times inspi­ra­tion can come from look­ing at lots of dif­fer­ent artists, or it can come from color—I’m quite obsessed with col­or and find­ing the per­fect com­bi­na­tion, often I look at artists who work real­ly well with col­or for my inspi­ra­tion, such as Matisse, the Fauves, Gau­guin, Helen Franken­thaler, and more con­tem­po­rary artists. I also find myself time and time again being drawn to post-war British art, artists like John Piper, Paul Nash, Gra­ham Suther­land, Mary Fed­den (a bit lat­er) and others.

In terms of con­tem­po­rary illus­tra­tors, I am more drawn to illus­tra­tors who have a less aca­d­e­m­ic style and more of a loos­er, wonky approach to their rep­re­sen­ta­tion. An exam­ple of this is real­ly ear­ly 1960’s David Hock­ney, although not an illus­tra­tor you can trace his mark mak­ing and (at that point) his child­like approach to fig­ure draw­ing for­ward to the way a lot of mod­ern illus­tra­tors approach their work now.

How do you use your inspi­ra­tion to gen­er­ate ideas?
I tend to write down sketch­es and ideas for illus­tra­tion and paint­ings when they come to me and then I let them float about for a while, some­times they come to fruition, and some­times they don’t, I find that a bit of time and intu­ition tells me whether they’ll work or not. If I’m hap­py to con­tin­ue with some­thing from there I tend to do more sketch­ing and a few ver­sions in dif­fer­ent col­or schemes. I usu­al­ly have a few projects going on at once and hav­ing now done a cou­ple of pic­ture books for pub­lish­ers, I’m now ready and have start­ed writ­ing my own—this in itself has been gen­er­at­ing many ideas!

What is a skill that you still want to learn in your illus­tra­tion career?
The annoy­ing bit that I haven’t quite mas­tered yet is to find the key to pro­mot­ing myself and get­ting out there a bit more, I’m get­ting there slow­ly. I think illus­tra­tors shouldn’t beat them­selves up if they haven’t got lots of fol­low­ers and take it as a reflec­tion of their tal­ent, this can be harm­ful when you are start­ing out. In fact, it’s prob­a­bly best not to take too much notice of it and get on with pro­duc­ing some great work, that way peo­ple will always find you. In terms of my cre­ative tech­nique and inspi­ra­tion I’m always be learn­ing; try­ing to find out new ways to inter­pret and cre­ate images, the list is end­less, but nev­er dull. One thing would be nice—being able to pro­duce work a bit quick­er and hav­ing more time to cre­ate work!

What piece of advice, habit, or tool has helped you the most in your career?
It’s all just been a case of tri­al and error, but I did read some­thing recent­ly from one of my favorite fine artists Karen Mam­ma Ander­son, about try­ing to keep up with trends in the art world, and that if you put too much empha­sis on this you could always be fol­low­ing behind. I think as artists and illus­tra­tors, we’re always try­ing to keep up to date, which is good in terms of tech­nique and style, but in terms of sub­ject mat­ter, there is a dan­ger that we can fall into the trap of fol­low­ing what is pop­u­lar. Karen’s words res­onat­ed with me, I’ve always tried to fol­low my own inter­ests, espe­cial­ly in terms of sub­ject mat­ter, and now even more so with my more fine-art based work.

I know this sounds a bit bor­ing but I think being orga­nized does help massively—getting your art mate­ri­als out and ready for action before you start will give you the momen­tum to get going if you’ve had a break, and as always keep­ing sketch­books to record your ideas. And final­ly open­ing your­self up to be influ­enced: from the mun­dane to the awe-inspir­ing, for me both are equal­ly as thought-provoking.