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| Interview: Socar Myles, Artist and Rat Lover |
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Let's get the personal info invasion out of the way. Where do you live and what is your age/gender?
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! At the moment, I'm living in Vancouver, Canada, and I'm 26 years old. And female. I'm moving to Sweden at the end of the year, though, when I finish school.
What are you currently doing with life? Work? School? What are your goals?
Until Christmas, I'm still in school, finishing up my BFA. Aside from that, I'm working as a freelance illustrator, doing mostly science-fiction and fantasy style pieces. I'd really like to get into the horror market more, though. Horror is my first love, artistically speaking. I grew up on 'Tales from the Crypt' comics and scary bedtime stories (courtesy of my father).
Goals, goals...Usually when people ask about my goals, I mention something I'm close to achieving anyway, so that people are impressed when I seem to effortlessly get exactly what I wanted. I feel generous today, though, so I'll share a few of my more...farfetched ambitions.
1. I want to be rich as Croesus. Richer, if possible.
2. If Paul Sammon puts out a third 'Splatterpunks' anthology, I want to either illustrate the cover or have a story between the covers.
3. I want my hero, Frank Miller, comic-book artist extraordinaire, to ask me for an autograph. (Hey, I did say 'farfetched ambitions'!)
4. Something realistic? I want to make a name for myself. Preferably one that's repeatable in polite society. You know how everyone always knows exactly who you mean when you say 'Vallejo'? Well, I don't necessarily need to be THAT famous, but it would be nice if people said 'Oh, yeah...now I know who you mean...That rat artist, right?', instead of 'Uh...soccer miles?'
5. One of these days, I'm going to find the time to do a comic-book series about rats. (Or maybe about a complete loser called Ernest Nobody, but that's another story entirely.)
Why so much rat artwork? What's the deal with that obsession? ;)
If there's a question I get asked more than any other, this is it. Why rats? Well, first off, I like them, both as companion animals and as subjects for drawing. They can twist their little bodies into all sorts of different positions, and they often stay in those positions long enough to get in a quick sketch. The main reason I choose to draw rats over any other domestic animal, however, is that they have a lot of very human characteristics. Their front paws, for instance, look much like tiny, half-thumbed hands. (Rats only have a small nub where the thumb would be on a person.) You'll never see a dog or a cat standing up on its hind legs holding a piece of food in its hand. But rats do that sort of thing all the time. They use their 'hands' in much the same way that people do, which gives them a lot of disquietingly human mannerisms.
I like to insert rats into common artistic scenarios that are usually reserved for humans. I have a picture of a rat staring sadly into the sunset, for instance, and another of a rat navigating a small boat across a stormy sea. Exchanging the usual human subject for a rat gets people to take a second look, and even consider an ordinary scene in a new light. The oddity is intended to prevent viewers from instantly categorizing my pictures, and comparing them to others they've seen before. I consider my work successful when people see it hanging on the wall and stop to say 'What the hell?'.
Do you have any pet rats? Are they shaved?
I have three pet rats right now--Twitch, Shakespeare, and Giggerota. None of them are SHAVED, but Giggerota is naturally hairless. She's named after a cannibal woman on a TV series called 'Lexx', who goes around dressed in the skins of her victims. Shakespeare is a Manx (tailless) rat, and she got her name from a Macbeth quote: 'And in a sieve, I'll thither sail / And like a rat without a tail / I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do!'. Poor Twitch is just an ordinary brown-and-white furry rat.
What type of traditional art do you do and when did you start?
I do a lot of pen-and-ink drawing. Comics were my first inspiration, particularly the work of 'Ghastly' (of 'Tales from the Crypt' fame). I also paint with oils, and I'm not too bad with an airbrush, either. The one medium I will not touch is acrylic. I hate acrylic paints. They dry too fast, and they munge up my brushes. I started doing traditional art seriously about ten years ago. (A bit of a late start, I know--but better late than never!) Since then, I've tried just about every medium I could think of.
Once, in my first year of art school, I even took a sculpture class, which ended in a minor disaster. For my final project, I made a life-sized sculpture of a human figure out of 60,000 feet of wire. It was large, ungainly, and highly realistic...and after the class was over, I had no idea what to do with it. For two years, it hung on my closet door. At some point, someone dressed it up in bellbottomed trousers, a big sweater, and some ratty old shoes. It even managed to score a ridiculous blonde wig.
Well, one day, I decided to move away from that apartment, which was not in the nicest area (to put it mildly). But I did NOT want to take that big, ungainly old sculpture with me. So I threw it out in the alley for the dustmen, and thought no more about it. Later on that evening, I was sitting in the back of a taxi, heading out of the old neighbourhood for the last time, when I noticed two police cars and a small crowd of very bemused policemen gathered in the alley, inspecting my discarded sculpture. Dressed up as it was, with the wig and the trousers and all, and lying face down, it had been mistaken for a corpse!
So I stick to 2D art these days....
How long have you been doing digital illustration?
I'm very new to the digital world. I've been doing digital colouring (of pen and pencil drawings) for about a year and a half, and digital painting for somewhat less than a year. Right now, I'm doing battle with that flat, airbrushed Photoshop look. My goal is to get my digital art to look as good as my oil paintings. (Craig Mullins, how do you do it?)
What is your favorite medium to work with?
That would be a toss-up between pen-and-ink and oils, since those are what I'm best at. Digital art has one huge advantage over oil painting, though--I am the world's lousiest photographer, and my scanner just does not like the texture of canvas. So I can't show off my oil paintings on the 'Net, but I can get instant critique (and publicity) for my digital work.
What is it about creating artwork that you enjoy most?
Mm...the money. Yes. Definitely the money. Okay, I lied--not the money. I may be a mercenary creature at heart, but I think my favourite part of creating artwork would have to be those occasions when I draw something, and someone looks at it and sees exactly what they are supposed to be seeing. I drew a picture of Paganini and his violin a couple of days ago, and several people remarked that they knew who it was before I told them. This was immensely gratifying, especially since Paganini has been dead since 1840. (On the flipside, I loathe it when I draw a picture and people read all sorts of strange things into it that weren't supposed to be there. I look at art as a form of communication, and when people get the wrong 'message', I take it as a failure of communication.)
If you could have one wish, what would it be?
I'd want to live forever. Well, as long as there were other human beings around, anyway. Or at least sentient aliens. Someone to talk to. I have a big long list of things I want to do before I die, and the way I've worked it out, it's going to take me at least a thousand years to finish everything on the list. And a lot changes in a millennium. By the time I get through that list, there are going to be a million other things to do. No, I simply cannot die. One misses so much, being dead.
Do you have any other hobbies or interests that you enjoy?
Yeah. I belong to this insect-worship cult--we call ourselves the Locust Plague Adventists. Every Friday, we get together on a mountaintop, get naked, and unleash the mosquito hordes. EeeeeEEEeeeEEEeee! I also love Italian opera, playing badminton (even though I'm terrible at it), and classic computer games.
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