I knew that I wanted to draw people, a lot of people, not all together, but singular figures. Having a learning disability inhibits your social skills, so I can link the drawing of people to what I wanted to know, but could never quite ask for. My Character works are based on multiple ideas taken from a lot of sources, largely film and music.
Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011.
Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, Tarsem Singh's The Cell and The Fall, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon were the four films that lent a visual link to what these drawings were to become. These four films all contained people coming together - for better or for worse - which takes it back to why I like drawing people.
Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011.
The Draughtsman's Contract visual exaggeration in it's fashion is fascinating from a design stand point. This is why the clothing for the Character drawings are large and unwieldy; extravagance for the character I would like to be and who I want to meet. The film deals with drawing too, as my late grandfather used to be an engineering draughtsman and went on to painting. His house still contains all his work to this day, on almost every wall in the house.
Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011.
Tarsem Singh is a very visual director, excellent at framing his shots just like paintings, even taking inspiration from Dali and Odd Nerdrum for his first feature; The Cell. His second film The Fall goes one step further, trading the imagination of the human mind to the beauty of landscape and human endeavor. The way the characters position themselves in certain scenes lends itself perfectly to paintings and illustrations. No doubt elements of 'The Golden Mean' were in a effect throughout this film. The fashion for all of Tarsem's films to date is the imagination of the late great Japanese designer Eiko Ishioka, and you can read about her here; http://coilhouse.net/2012/01/r-i-p-eiko-ishioka-july-1939-january-21-2012/. This designer's work is pretty much is the living proof of my drawing style's originality. Everything comes from something else, as they say.
Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is a large film in scope, however its now famous candlelit scene - and the fashion of the French aristocracy in particular - led to the somewhat cubic pompadour headpiece. Just like The Draughtsman's Contract, Barry Lyndon's fashion has stuck with me in some form or other, lending itself to envisioning what I wanted to draw, to actually nailing the style of my illustrations.
The drawing style was born from a side project during my final year of my somewhat ill-fated degree as I began to use music to provide inspiration. Out of this came a 200 page sketch book of drawings to music, which allowed me to conjure and contort shapes in my imagination, guided what music that I felt would best fit the imagination. Many of the shapes where pretty complex, resembling two-dimensional Tony Cragg sculptures.
Character series, Michael Clulee, 2011.
The pompadour idea was born out of being constrained by life in the city hence its skyline shape. The original idea was to fuse these twisting, contorting shape designs to the fashion design of these characters. Some of the early ideas are still on my website, where the people's faces are defined but everything else is completely out of human physiological conformity.
Michael Clulee, 2011.
I have yet to find out why I like doing that so much, but it would mostly describe how my inhibitions interfere with daily life. That or watching the 1982 version of The Thing has something to do with it.
Music is another major factor for influencing my work, not just for its subject matter, but actually forming the shape to what the music is doing to me at the time. The drawings I made for my drawings-to-music book were all but vocal-less, from Ralph Vaughn Williams to Aphex Twin and Autechre, their compositional elements factor into the shape that came into my mind. Amon Tobin's latter, post-2000 work is of particular obsessive interest.
The piece named Structure harks back to the days when I became fascinated by geological processes, the Cornish Coast and its cliffs.
Structure, Michael Clulee, 2011.
This, like many of my drawings, begins with no real pre-plan at all, I just grabbed the ruler and pen and looked at the piece of card where I was going to draw on and just went in head-first. It's the best way to see out an idea just by plunging in. However for a more complex idea to manifest, it needs a lot of working out. I hope to go back to the twisting contorting works i had done a few months back and start creating some real surreal works from them.
I have many favourite Illustrators and artists who have also lent influence over the years, ranging from Moebius to Les Edwards, John Blanche, Ian Miller, Olivier Ledroit and James Gurney to name a few. I have also had the pleasure of seeing the work of Henry Moore, Tony Cragg and Anish Kapoor up close and have been extremely prevalent in my imagination and hope they continue to do so in the future.
+-+ADJ.jpg)
+-+ADJ.jpg)
.JPG){kind=tracking}
.jpg)
+-+sharp.jpg)
+-+sharp.jpg)
+-+sharp.jpg)
