We caught up with artist-in-residence Jack Stamp to find out more about his latest creation, Plasticine Cowboy.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I’m an illustrator and designer from Edinburgh. My work usually involves combining traditional hand drawn illustration, in pencil or ink, with clean digital shapes and bold colours to create (hopefully) striking imagery. I have a degree in Illustration and a masters degree in Comics & Graphic Novels, both from The University of Dundee.
What did you get up to on your residency?
Creating the original image of the plasticine cowboy was one of the first things I did during the residency, as experimenting with the material was something lurking in the back of my mind for a little while beforehand but not having the time to properly see it through.
I drew the image in pencil first and then sculpted pieces of the plasticine on top of another sheet of paper using a lightbox. I then scanned this in and got it ready for printing.
I thought it worked really well with the bright colours the riso printers allowed for. I did a six colour print and I was very pleased with the results. I then experimented with other styles of mark making and saw how they worked when printed and combined with various texture, colour and grain combinations. I was happy with these results but nothing stood out to me as much as the first image of the cowboy I had made.
When did you decide to work on a comic?
Originally I wasn’t even planning on making a comic but I liked the results of the test so much that I felt the need to. I just needed a story. It wasn’t for a while then that I thought of a suitable narrative to make something using this technique. Before I had a story I wanted to see how a comic would look in this style. I digitally cut up the test print I had done into separate panels and tried to create a small one page story just using the one image. This created a three colour print that I was happy with and thought it would work well as the look for the final comic. I included quite thick white panel borders as I thought this contrasted nicely with the soft edges and roundness of the plasticine.
Where did the story idea come from?
The idea for the story came to me when reading the safety instruction leaflet that comes with a pack of plasticine. The story follows a cowboy wandering into town after going on a rescue mission to save a woman’s son and ending in a shootout. The narration in the captions of the comic describe the properties and safety features of plasticine whilst also relating to specific events happening in the narrative. For example, “suitable for children” as he goes to rescue the child, “even when consumed” as the child bites his hand as he tries to uncuff him.
I worked out the thumbnails and layouts for the page and the story just kept expanding, what I had originally planned to just be a short, couple pages of comic turned into a full 16ish pager.
I loosely sketched out each page of the comic before sculpting the plasticine on a separate sheet on top. I then photographed each piece individually before editing and arranging digitally. Each section of a sculpted scene has to be done in different coloured plasticine, this makes it easier for editing each colour separately when switching to black and white, before adding the colour back in on different layers.
Who were your influences for this project?
I looked at a lot of Alberto Breccia’s work for his very experimental approach to comic making, as well as Scottish comic artist Frank Quitely for his masterful approach to storytelling.
How did you make use of the riso?
The riso printing process really gives the comic a great textured and grainy look that helps to pull the photographed and digital elements together to create a cohesive style.
I wanted to make clear the timezones the story takes place in by having the present scenes in an orange colour scheme (day time) and the flashback moments where the majority of the narration takes place in purple (night time). I also tried to make sure that the cowboy was moving in different directions across the page each time. To the right as he rides out to save the child and to the left as he returns to town to reunite mother and son.
And thus, Plasticine Cowboy was born. I’ve hopefully created something that is narratively and visually very unique to this comic and is something that people haven’t seen anything like before.
Exhibition open 1st August-28th September
Mondays-Saturdays 10am-5pm
at Out of the Blue Drill Hall.