The Sketchbook Series - Karl Kopinski

I like drawing on tables feels rebellious I used to draw in school all the time and then get told off all the time like what are you doing in the back sorry drawing no I wasn't that rebellious a little bit too scared of that that stay within the little safe zone in the back of the sketch okay am I allowed to open the book now okay I think when I was working in this book I just started a project I was doing with a company called cool mini or not where we're doing some Godfather based stuff so it's all like kind of twenties 30s so I think if I remember rightly there's quite a bit of guys who look like they're from the 20s or 30s just because it was sort of zipping around my head a bit and though this was the first initial sketch for the Godfather box game cover which they allow me to use Marlon Brando's likeness on and then some of these are actually little thumbnails which then became bigger paintings by that's meant to be have a semblance of Paul Newman to it things like that I kind of got into Vikings for a while as well I really loved Anatomy I'm that's one of my real sort of passions is human anatomy so and like I say there's areas I I know I can tackle quite well and without using reference but those areas that I still need to work on it I'm trying to improve those all the time you know like on the plane yesterday I did one in the hand went wrong so I just did a page of hands like so you stupid chastising myself for making such a bad job of that's like idiot now draw 50 I kind of like these grisly middle-aged characters I think it's as I'm becoming more grisly and middle-aged I don't know I think I've always been grizzly middle-aged and when I was a kid my dad used to him he was really quite an authority in the area on Native American Indians so we grew up with a lot of these books of Remington and Charles Russell and things like this and he used to make these little maquettes for museums to use and he's really good at drawing he just he just stopped doing it when he went to art college which is weird I've got two young kids as well so I think it's nice for them to see me just doing something because I love it you know because they see me working on projects and they know but they know that's also to pay the bills but then this is the route of where I'm at now there's me drawing because I love to draw you know so I think my son's really naturally talent today like he gets perspective and but he doesn't want to practice he just wants to play Minecraft I get frustrated because I'm like if you did this you know three or four times a day you'd be so good and then you ask him what he wants to do and he said I just want to be like her design Pokemon characters I want do some drawing them hmm I will have to have played it and then so you don't need it and trying to get him to understand that you need to work it and I called my son art as well because I thought it was funny because then I thought well he's he's either gonna go down that route or he's gonna be like an accountant just to go see Dad you can't unchanged his name too like yeah yeah my dad's a musician he's a saxophonist and I played guitar but I'm not very good you know I think it was a bit like I said a little bit of intimidation as well he was so good but then my sister she's now classical musician so she was she did the whole music thing but she's a terrible drawer but me and my brother are both good at drawing he's a good musician as well so he's a bit annoying see and he's really good-looking yeah he's quite irritating really I tried to do strong female characters because I've got a young daughter who's 11 and I don't want to do too much yeah booby action and things like that I want them to be girls that they look like you wouldn't want to mess with them really so yeah I'm trying to be conscious of that I was so I'm not very good at doing those you know I like there's this my daughter's always drawing these little cute Kawai things and unicorns and so they they often creep into the sketches I think she likes it Oh David Bowie when he died I really like Hellboy as well draw Hellboy a lot no this was for that Godfather project so the the brief was somebody who looked a little bit like Tony Soprano and I like portraits as I like to try to put as much kind of character into each individual so like rather than just doing a generic face I try to make them feel like they've got a bit of a story to tell or but even you know add a bit more emotion and stuff to to an image with that man with an axe man with a gun man with an axe man with the gun man with the gun and the sort of the feel to know what that says about me as a person should we switch books I think this was just before the pink one I'm not sure but I know it was around October because then I started doing loads of inking for inktober but I'm not I wasn't so comfortable with it then I was struggling it's a little bit of that thing like I say to get out your comfort zone and so I knew that doing a lot of pencil work and I was a little bit afraid of the thing work because it's so final I think you have to spend time finding you your way of making a mark with the medium really so I spent quite a while trying to work out what worked for me really and then I was doing this kind of wash thing because when I was working at Games Workshop I we did a lot of work where we work in acrylic inks and build it up in like in thin layers but it kind of reckless the paper a bit so and then I bought that Kim junkie pen and couldn't use it so it got really frustrated and then I found this pen that I quite liked that was it like a fineliner type thing and now I fan these pens are quite liked as well which you're like Tombo these ones I think that food like Japanese calligraphy but they've got a bit of flex to the nib so you can kind of use them on their edge and but also get really fine lines so that was a bit of a revelation to to try different pen one thing I'm aware is that I fall into a trap of doing or a cool guy or a cool girl and so I want to try and get a bit more narrative into some of the things so I'm trying to work on that at the moment and I also started I haven't got them with me today but doing somewhere there I'm actually putting some environment in as well and you know I'm starting to toy with the idea of coming up with a like an IP as you call it but you know something that is part of a whole bigger picture you know and then tough tough cheeks again I still struggle a bit with women's faces so I try and practice that a lot as well I'm quite into history as well so a lot of the stuff I do is informed by that kind of that's a Napoleonic period with bits on top and then my obsession with cycling like I was always into sports and little but not very good at them because I wasn't a good at being part of a team but then I like cycling because it's a bit like drawing you can always read better and do it on your own it's like a battle against yourself really so if you go out for a ride you have this different emotions where you feel good and you think oh this is no problem and then inevitably feel bad again and for me that's just like a painting you start at the beginning you're full of excitement and all this one's going to be really good then you start to get into the meat of it and it's and that's when the struggle starts and then you get to the top and freewheel down and back to you know on to the next one really so I really you know I really like it but it's become probably an unhealthy obsession now again the Western thing I think maybe zombie cowboys well that's my friend look well every year I do this I do a Christmas card of my family and then print them and send them to everyone and they become harder and harder to do every year and you have to come up with something cute : so I was probably you know at that point and then really that's the one I wanted to do with Santa drinking with Krampus so I'm thinking maybe when my kids are teenage I can do this I'll save that one for like maybe five or six years time and here in fact these are these are the thumbnails for the Christmas cards and then I this is in Florence it's just the best place so I spent four weeks there this year in the summer and four weeks last year in the summer so it's starting to sort of inform a lot of my sort of sketching and drawing so yeah do you want another book this has only got a few sketches in really this is the one that's on the go at the moment because I had several in the same color so I just did a sketch on the front so that I knew which book was which or sometimes I get my kids to do it but yeah every time I started a new one I think right this I'm going to do a really good sketch on the first page and then it would go wrong so that one got discarded because I wasn't happy with the way she was looking but I that would always be on this page it went wrong so I decided to do it on this page and it didn't go so wrong and they're getting the cute kawaii unicorn jumping over a rainbow this was a monk ice when we were staying in Florence I don't know if you saw it there's an area called Gallup so and then on the hill was a famous monastery called the chat OSA it used to be a thriving monastery and there's now only two monks left there and they just kind of shuffle around this huge monastery on a hill and he was one of the guys when I was in Luke I started to come up with some ideas I didn't last year as well of us off slightly steampunk ish world I'm starting to develop where they fly round with grappling hooks and things so and it's also you've seen the buildings as well everywhere is like ancient so I really like that fact that you can get up high on these towers and look down on the on the streets below you so that was the sort of thinking with the perspective there and then again like I said earlier I'm trying to develop a bit more of a maybe Blade Runner II environments in there it dawned on me that really to sort of develop something that's you know convincing as though as a world you need to address that a little bit they can't just be people dangling on ropes yes I was looking at really good digital painters and things like that and I just can't do that still I want to back on but then our family if I work in line I can get something that you know I get the information down and it sits well with the emission and does the job really and they're quite like to put these little like the picture of the beach because people when you post them on Instagram people always spot spot them one one person always spots these things if not many so I quite like to give them little things that they can look out for in their you know a few years ago I'd done a few sketches and my colleagues at games workshop liked them but then what happened was I posted one or two on Instagram and got a really good response so the audience asked me for more so I thought okay well host more and then I practiced more because they wanted to see more and then they said can you make a book so I made a book and then so in actual fact it's sort of been informed by the audience as much as you know me I'm not a naturally confident person so I wasn't confident that people wanted to see this it what I realized was I went through life like we just spoke sketching and doodling and then I got a job so I stopped sketching and doodling unless I had to do it for the painting and then I realized that that was one of the things that I did really well and everyone really liked so I kind of came back to it in you know later I think I got very lucky because I put stuff out at a good time and it was different to what you know a lot of other guys were doing this was one I posted just recently so like some kind of cyber zombie dude but you know is when I was you know like 20 you you didn't even have really the Internet you know you were yeah - like when I was looking for work with comics I was taking them to the photocopying machine photocopying it writing a letter and posting it to the office so everything's changed now and also so much more information you know used to go to a library and pour through some books to find artists that you like now you just google it and it's there and then you get the stuff that's like it or other people like so it's a lot easier to get this kind of information so to know if it makes people a little lazy sometimes that's the only downside I think sometimes you need to realize is that's just the tip of the iceberg and if you use that as your waiter to investigate and stuff further that's probably the correct you know way to do it really that's my son and when we were in Italy that one of my friends Luca started calling him kid dynamite so I came up with kid dynamite yeah he was super happy and then he gave me loads of ideas for what what skills he could happen what the guns could do and like I thought about it I was like oh is it right to give my son you know a huge plasma cannon or what I mean what would he honestly do with that you give him some blaster scene or a pen and it causes devastation so you know but what I might do is I'm good I'm just doing sketchbook vol 3 so I think this might be the cover of it because I was quite happy and it sort of sits well with the other ones I've done and it'd be quite cool to have him on the front this was on the plane I was sketching some guy on the plane on the way here and then a pirate and then someone posted on Instagram I can't remember her name she just said oh my god I can't believe it I was sat on the plane next to you I'm gonna be at Thu I was watching you draw so she sat there watching me mmm like a weird old guy unicorn for the event I didn't use reference for this so it's kind of it's hard because you know you're gonna make mistakes if you can understand how these things work and you've got a basic idea of the enough to me underneath you can really start to build it with basic shapes and make it sort of convincing you know and then the back Batman with a Viking helmet and one of my daughter's drawings the princess and that's that top hit okay space monkey is pretty good these were on the journey driving to Italy this was near Turin and there was a sign with a mountain goat on so I drew mountain goat men a man with the lorry on his head a truck on his head with the t4 truck in the week I tried to make time to actually sketch from life really and I don't include them as that stuff but they're really important you know it's training really especially with kids it's really good because they you know they're always writin themselves around and you know and then it's some kind of cyber Japanese samurai dude I don't know my daughter again this is all in Luca some people on the beach again tough tattooed girls lady in the cafe next to me this was taken from a big guy I saw in Italy kind of squashed into a tiny little motor scooter and then this Franken scone I quite like he's got what's up dark written on his t-shirt because I did another sketch and I posted it online and someone said it's not Frankenstein it's Frankenstein's monster Frankenstein was the doctor so then I drew Frankenstein's monster again and put what's up-dock on his t-shirt so yeah that's that okay I'll just find a plane yes and then I'll just kill again okay and how long am I allowed to take like all day or you take my time to shine I'm trying to let my pencil wander a bit you know I got so obsessed about doing like accurate first time you put the line down that's that's the the final and then I kind of realized it's not really what I was good at and it's not one of my strong points really so I think maybe like part of getting older as an artist is learning like what you do well and then trying to improve the the other areas that you think you need to you know work on but I think that's quite important as well when you're if you good you should always be looking to be better and once you get it into your head that you you're really good then you've sort of lost the point of it yeah you just flatline and that and that's it I don't think you should stay comfortable for very long so stagnating is the fear really because I saw I saw really interesting documentary about the Japanese artists is it haka sigh did the wave crashing very famous printmaker in the 1800's they spoke about how he'd have gone through this period and you've been quite poor and he and then he managed to get some money together and but he worked incessantly all the time that was his drive was to work and they said he when he was seventeen he would be saying yeah but when I have 75 I'll be really good and then he got 75 maybe like when I'm 80 I'm going to be hot and I really like that because there is no end point the end point is you dying not being as good as you want it to be which is quite sad but it's difficult because sometimes you do you start your painting you think yep this is the one and then you get halfway through and you're like it's not the one but I've got to finish it because the guy needs it for the next week so like I did some talks with school ISM so what I decided to talk about was more about my kind of journey of getting to where I am and I spoke a lot about that insecurity and how you you know you feel the same as a lot of those guys too that you know I could be so much better and that guy's so much better than me and so for me I think it's in you know I'm very aware that I'm not as good as I want to be and there's a whole load of people out there doing stuff that I would love to be able to do I'm sort of a bit obsessed with other artists like Mobius Ian MacKaye Gore I just met outside of the minor freak out about I really look forward yeah don't talk to me huh yeah it's terrible isn't it crippling sometimes I like I know who else I really like his Phil Hales line word I really like that you know it's edgy but he's really kind of you know he seems really decisive in what he's doing I really like putty Rovers kind of love them because you can just they just taken off after the little bit of the marks underneath and you can just kind of shape them and make a nice pointy and use them a bit like a pencil you see and I get really annoyed by my kids because they just pull them apart throughout the main tune I'm not the body robot I don't really have many thoughts drawing I just tend to draw really for me it's a bit like meditation as well you sort of find that regardless of what's been going on in the day you can kind just lose yourself in even ten minutes of just you know doodling and you know I think that's quite nice thing to be able to do in in your daily routine you know just chilling out a bit so yeah if I'm in a restaurant or I don't want to talk then the book comes out and then it sort of works as well because you get a bit of attention people for it as well totally like a school I used to there was a guy who was like the school bully and he he was a boxer and he was like a real hard man and he used to go around beating people up but he wouldn't beat me or because I sketched a picture of a boxer for him once it's become my don't hurt me I'll draw yeah it's the safe place it's okay we have a friend who's a fireman and decide yeah I drag to dead people out of a fire oh I had a bad day as well really yeah I couldn't get this orcs head right I've had a hard day it's all relative oh so I always think it's all relative you know just because you've had to tell three people they've got cancer you don't know what it's like when a painting goes badly wrong it's so stupid isn't it there's more and more evidence for artists being stupid as we go deeper into the interviewer thing you [Music]

Channel: Trojan Horse Was a Unicorn

Views: 1,410,829

Keywords: THU, THU TV, Art, artists, creativity, inspiration, ideas, sketchbook, drawing, sketch, Exclusive Show, art, doodles, Trojan Horse was an Unicorn, Illustration, concept art, Karl Kopinski, sketchbook tour, karl kopinski, kim jung gi, how to draw, Peter Jackson, Sir Paul Smith, Hasbro, Ubisoft, Aboud Creative, Sixmorevodka, Wizards of the coast, Massive Black, Moving Picture Company, Coolminiornot, sketching, notebook, notebook drawing, notebook doodles, notebook sketches, sketchbook art

Id: I_bBwtn_SnI

Length: 24min 49sec (1489 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018