pic by Joe Gordon, with thanks

AJ: There's a very obvious ligne-claire influence on your work, which you've made no secret of, but I'm curious about any other influences on your drawing. From what I've seen of your adaptation of The Tempest (here and here) — which I've not read in full — the line was much more detailed, and reminded me far more of artists like Arthur Rackham and William Heath Robinson. Are there any other artistic influences besides the obvious ligne-claire stylings of Edgar P Jacobs and Hergé who you would like to namecheck?

GE: Arthur Rackham and Heath Robinson are two of my favourite artists, and were my gateway into discovering Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Harry Clarke and others of that era. That may seem a long way from Hergé or Yves Chaland, but there's a sensibility that connects them all in Japanese print work, which I used to sit and copy for hours in my mid-teens. Those prints, by artists such as Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige are very ligne claire, and they also influenced the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements. Another big influence on my comic work is Richard Corben, I'm aware of him within my work but I doubt it shows through the Hergé that I suspect blinds the casual observer. I used to want to be like Brian Bolland, but I'm all right now (I still love his work). The artist I got compared to most in the early 90s was probably Bryan Talbot, which is fine by me!

AJ: Was it a conscious decision to move towards the ligne-claire style because of the style of the story you were telling, or was it more of an organic change?

GE: It was a conscious decision. I kind of decided to give up wanting to become a "proper comic artist" – I realised I didn't want to be a pen for hire, I wanted to indulge myself, so it was a matter of deciding the kind of comics I loved most, and wanting to do my own. There are a lot of good reasons, I think, for doing this kind of adventure comic in ligne claire. Having said that, after the complexity of my style in The Tempest, I did clean up my art a bit – I did a little strip for Rol Hirst's The Jock that is a sort of missing link between The Tempest and The Rainbow Orchid.

AJ: Speaking of influences, you mentioned on Twitter a while back that your narrative was quite influenced by playing the Broken Sword computer game. Are there any other writerly influences people might not guess at?

GE: I've mentioned the authors H Rider Haggard, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle before – they really are the biggest story influences on The Rainbow Orchid. I like film directors who also wrote their own scripts, especially Akira Kurosawa and Charlie Chaplin. They solved story problems visually and through character. That is always a background to my writing, but I don't think I've had the time to really indulge in that area of things yet — I haven't given myself enough space. But I think there are probably one or two moments where I'm channeling that spirit, if you like.

I want readers to get lost in the book, and that's what happened to me when I read King Solomon's Mines, or Asterix and Tintin, and when I played Broken Sword for the first time. From Hell is another example — I forgot I was reading a comic, which is a lovely feeling.

AJ: It's interesting that almost all of the storytelling influences you mention are prose or cinema writers rather than comics writers, and From Hell is not exactly a typical comic — or at least, it wasn't when it came out; being as literary as it was. Are there any comics writers you particularly admire?

GE: I don't think there are any comic writers, separate from artists, that have left any kind of an indelible mark on me, apart from Alan Moore to some degree. Most of the comics that have had any kind of impact are the product of a singular vision – Hergé, Jacobs, Lewis Trondheim, Hiyao Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka and all that. One of my very favourite comics was, and is, Charley's War, but I'm not certain that I feel particularly influenced by Pat Mills — but I'm sure it must be there in the mix to some degree. What child that grew up in the 1970s and went on to make their own comics doesn't have Pat Mills in there somewhere?!

AJ: That's true! You do a lot of research to get tiny details right. You must come across a lot of temptingly interesting tangents. What's been the most intriguing, which might make you want to abandon what you're doing and chase fragments of a new story?

GE: Looking into the Kalasha people of Chitral was fascinating, and I did a disproportionate amount of research seeing as they only appear in a few panels, but I would be tempted to follow them up, and the myth that they might be the descendants of some of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, which I'm not sure I believe is actually true. I think it would be too close to Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King though!

AJ: That's not necessarily a reason not to write about it, though — if it was then pretty much most comics or movies would never get made!

GE: That's true, but I think Kipling (or John Huston for the excellent film version) said it all so well already, I don't think I'd bring anything new to it.

Another thing might be the Breguet aircraft – I had a friend of mine make a balsa wood model of it, though the plane crashes in a ball of flame in volume two – so I'd like to get more use out of that and give the Tayaut family some little adventures of their own.

AJ: It would be great to see more of the Tayaut family. I love the twins; they seem like great role models for little girls: I think they probably would have been my favourite characters when I was a kid. They remind me of the character Fio in Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, being girls doing things with airplanes that weren't — and still aren't — traditionally female. In some ways that film also has a similar aesthetic (albeit from a slightly later era), which brings me to another question — animation is another medium which combines words and images, almost a bridge between live action cinema and comics. So what sort of animation do you like?

GE: Miyazaki hits the spot for me. I just watched Whisper of the Heart (for which he wrote the script) – it was a four-blub film, so beautiful. Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and My Neighbour Totoro are masterpieces, and I remember thinking Porco Rosso probably was about the same time setting as Rainbow Orchid… late twenties? I used to really love Disney, but since discovering Miyazaki I can only watch a few of them now. Pinnochio is the best, Snow White, and I quite like Mulan and Atlantis from the later period. When I was about 11 my mum wrote off to the Disney Studios on my behalf to enquire about working there, and I got a reply letting me know how much hard work it would be!

AJ: Yeah, I'm under no illusions that doing animation is an easy job, even with computers. Speaking of work, you're working on volume 3 of The Rainbow Orchid, before it all comes out in one collection next year. What do you want to work on after that?

GE: Already plotted out is another Julius Chancer adventure. This one takes place mainly in Britain and leans more towards being a detective story, a murder mystery. It also focuses more on Julius Chancer as the central character, because The Rainbow Orchid is rather an ensemble piece, I think. I want to dive straight into that as soon as Rainbow Orchid is done.

AJ: Oooh, exciting! The 1920s and 1930s is such a classic era for detective fiction. I'm tempted to quiz you further on that, but I think I'd rather be surprised.

GE: I just hope The Rainbow Orchid does well enough to see a second story published. RO was conceived and plotted, including the ending, back in 1997. I'm dying to originate something new, with all I've learnt about comic storytelling in the past ten years.

AJ: The second Rainbow Orchid book has a couple of "origin" stories — how Lily became a Hollywood actress, how Julius ended up working for Sir Alfred — will the next book have some more of those?

GE: The only other story that gets told in The Rainbow Orchid will be Meru's story in volume 3. William Pickle's was told in The Girdle of Polly Hipple, which appeared in Accent UK's Twelve anthology, and Lily's was a longer story that appeared in The Girly Comic back in 2004. Julius's was plotted out for an anthology as well, but in the end was just summarised in RO volume 2. Sir Alfred would be the other big story to tell, but I think that will just be revealed in little snippets as we go along.

AJ: Is there any plan to collect them, or at least make them available to more people? And I'd love to know more about young George Scrubbs, Pickle's photographer. He seems like he might have some stories to tell.

GE: I haven't thought very seriously about collecting them – the Lily story just appeared in the Dutch comics magazine, Stripschrift. It was a twelve-page story that I crammed into six pages, and the Pickle story was an eight-pager that went down to four, so it would be nice to give them more space one day, though I doubt that will actually happen. George Scrubbs I haven't thought about, to be honest, but you're right, there's a story there somewhere…

AJ: This probably ties into the question above, but how did Evelyn Crow get to be so nasty?

GE: She would be the other main origin story readers would want, certainly! But actually she's probably best kept as an enigma, which she is, even to me at the moment! Maybe she'll reveal herself one day…

AJ: It seems fitting that of all the characters, she's the one who remains most shrouded in mystery. I think in some ways that's a large part of her appeal, and learning the truth about her might seem… disappointing or anticlimactic.

GE: I think you're right. Evelyn is my most common sketch request at comic shows and signings, though she does have to survive volume three yet – Nathaniel did put a bullet in her at the end of volume two!

Thanks again to Garen for the interesting conversation. Books one and two of the Rainbow Orchid are out now, with volume three to come next year. Go and buy everyone a copy for Christmas!

I've known Jill Allyn Stafford since about 2002, when we first started chatting on the original SK8 Jesus messageboard. Like me, she had an interest in many forms of visual arts and funny anecdotes, and even when I stopped being active on any messageboards, she was one of the people I made an effort to stay in touch with, mostly via her Flickrstream.

In the few years since I first met her, Jill has taken great strides with her own creative life, garnering a significant collection of work, and becoming heavily involved in the running of a local gallery, Vox, in her home town of Sacramento. I'm delighted she agreed to be interviewed because I find her attitude very inspiring, and I hope you do, too.

AJ: Who (or what) inspired you to start making collages?
JAS: In 1995 my husband and I were in New Orleans, visiting a friend of his from childhood. His friend was showing us the town, and we stopped in some touristy store so he could buy stamps. I saw the postcards he was mailing and they were all self-made, and they were all collage. I thought they were the coolest things ever and figured that I could do that. About four years ago I started getting into it seriously, and participated in my first art show in 2007.

AJ: What other artists/people inspire you now?
JAS: Oh wow, so many people inspire me. I absolutely love the artistry behind David Mack's work. Hannah Höch. Graffiti artists. And all those people who push me. Charity Larrison and Jeremy Love were key in originally getting me to put myself out there. Laurenn McCubbin gives me new ideas and just really, wow, challenges the hell out of me. She's amazing in her support.

AJ: How do you decide which images and scraps go best together? Is it just an intuitive thing of trying out different layouts, or do you start with a distinct idea of what you want the final piece to look like?
JAS: I start a piece by picking out one or two images that really capture me. From there, I decide how I'd like to progress — either by color schemes or shapes, or whatever. There really is no specific method to my madness. It always depends on how I'm feeling that night.

AJ: Do you ever find yourself looking for a perfect image to tie the collage together, and having to make do with something else because you don't have what you want? Are you generally pleased with the end result anyway?
JAS: It's funny that way, I rarely run into this problem. When I'm working on collages, my brain goes into this weird kind of zen mode. I lose track of time, and basically I just play with scraps and shapes and colors until it all seems to fit. So there's rarely this idea of making do. Everything either works for me or it doesn't. If it doesn't I'll set that piece aside and work on it later, and generally at that point I can finish it to my satisfaction.

And yeah, I'm almost always pleased with my end results (and even if not, I'll sometimes incorporate that piece into another, so there's never really anything that I give up on).

AJ: Do you think of those situations as happy accidents, or are you frustrated that it isn't exactly what you were after?
JAS: Always happy accidents, everything is a happy accident. I never start out with any specific plan in mind. It all comes together as I work. Which is probably why it takes me so long to finish the smallest of pieces.

AJ: You use a lot of vintage and found images. Where do you source them?
JAS: I generally find old pictures or magazines at antique stores. My husband, though, has always made the best finds. He went to an antique store in rural Alabama and came back with some amazing war ration stamps, vintage African-American photographs, and even an old book on spells.

AJ: What's the appeal of using old images rather than more contemporary ones?
JAS: Ha, easy, no copyright infringement. That's it really.

AJ: Do you feel nostalgic for the past?
JAS: Nah. While there are certain aesthetics that I have nostalgia for — 1920s and 1940s style clothing and art for example — I much prefer the time we're in now.

To quote Gogol Bordello, "there were never any good old days, they are today, they are tomorrow, it's a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow".

AJ: So, are you basically the same person you were when you were younger, or do you think your personality has undergone radical changes?
JAS: I'm definitely not the same person. I was shy, no self confidence. Somehow magically that has changed (in most arenas at any rate). When we're throwing an art show and I'm playing hostess, I can talk to anybody. Something that I never thought I could do.

AJ: The art shows are at Vox. Tell us about them — how did you get involved with that?
JAS: I got involved in Vox simply by accident. A client at the law firm where I work saw some of my artwork and told me I should introduce myself to some of the people who threw the Vox shows. I did, and they asked to me participate in their next show. I participated in a few more, and got to really like the people.

I sat in on some of their organizational meetings, and they talked extensively about wanting to be a non-profit corporation. With my background as a legal assistant in a law firm, I had plenty of experience forming corporations. I helped them set up their corporate entity, and somehow I also became an officer and a member of the board of directors.

AJ: What sort of responsibilities do you have running a gallery business? Do you have any advice for people who'd like to do something similar?
JAS: Our responsibilities range from finding artists, to hanging their work, advertising for the show, booking musicians to play, prepping the venue for the shows, tearing it all down when the show's done (we share space so we can leave work hanging for one night only), helping the artists price their work, and coming up with themes for shows.

The biggest thing I can emphasize is that you really need to go into this loving what you do. Since we're a non-profit, we personally make no money and spend so many hours making things happen, so it really is the satisifaction of throwing a great show and making a difference in people's lives that has to make it work for you.

AJ: You have limited space, so how do you decide which art you display? Do you take anyone's submissions from anywhere, or is it only people who live in Sacramento?
JAS: One of our goals is to help people who have never shown before, or never played before, and provide them with a venue where they can gain some experience and maybe some self confidence to continue putting their art or music out there. We have a really big space, so it's never been a matter of too much art. We show everything an artist that we've booked brings in.

We do accept submissions from everyone, but because we are a one-night-only venue, it's easier and more cost effective for locals to participate. That being said, we'd love to show work from all over the world.

AJ: What have you got coming up?
JAS: I currently have two pieces in the Centenary of Collage exhibition at the Arison Gallery in Manchester [more information here], and will be showing at Vox Sacramento for our April Second Saturday show on April 11.

AJ: Okay, one last question for fun: what would you do with a time machine?
JAS: I'd go back and hold my children when they were babies. Sniff their heads and just really soak them in. And then as soon as it was time to change a diaper, I'd come back to the future.

For more of Jill's work, take a look at her Flickrstream.

What are your favourite things about your local area? And what are your least favourite?

I love the atmosphere of the South Bank, the river, the architecture, the tourists, the kids who come from miles around to fall off skateboards… Someone once described it to me as London’s promenade, and I think that’s about right. People take their time and are happy to be seen, you can walk a long way without crossing a road, and the light is incredible when it sets on the Thames to the west. There isn’t much I don’t like about it. A little too much trumpet, maybe.

I think most of your photos are black and white. Do you actually shoot in b/w or do you shoot in colour and edit your pictures later? What's the appeal of monochrome?

I primarily shoot digital, so I shoot in colour and convert to B+W later. As a rule of thumb, unless the colour is one of the main features of the picture, I'll lose it. B+W tends to emphasise the structure of a picture and can remove a layer of distraction. Although other times, colour can clarify a picture that might be confusing in monochrome. One of the joys of digital photography is that you can always try both.

One accusation that is often levelled at so-called street photographers is that they are voyeuristic rubberneckers. Do you agree with that opinion?

I think that would be quite fair in my case! In the strict sense, all photographers are voyeurs in that we like to look. But I don’t think there’s anything unseemly about that. I’m not peeping through windows! I’m primarily interested in how people behave in public, so there’s rarely if ever an expectation of privacy at play.

I did have pause for thought last summer when I was taking pictures of Blackfriars for a "Week In The Life" composite, and in the middle of the week, someone threw themselves off the bridge. Perhaps I should have excluded that event from the record, or started again the following week, but both those options would have undermined the point of the exercise. And the public nature of the suicide felt like a significant part of the tragedy, so I included elements of the police search shortly after he jumped and the recovery of the body at low tide the following day. It became a very different picture from the one I’d had in mind, and one that I genuinely agonised over. [See the montage here.]

Have you ever had someone get really angry at you for taking their picture? What did you do?

No, I've never had someone get really angry, but then I'm most interested taking photos in ultra-public places so it’s seldom an issue. However, I did shoot a collection for an exhibition in Whitechapel last year and met some resistance in some parts around there. But that’s fair enough, and if someone doesn't want their picture taken, I won't take their picture.

You tend to mostly focus on the area where you live and work, along the South Bank. Are there any places or people you dream about visiting to photograph?

The truth is that I don’t think I’m close to over-fishing even a small part of London, and it changes faster than I can photograph it. I love cities though, and would like to photograph a few more. San Francisco always looks ridiculously photogenic, I’d like to see Venice, and Tokyo looks incredible… but I think I’d always wonder what I was missing back at home.

As far as people go, I’d like to overcome my resistance to posed portraits. Most people just don’t look like themselves when they’re acutely conscious that they’re being photographed. And it feels ridiculous to pretend that it’s not a weird situation. So I have this idea of embracing that awkwardness and doing a collection of studio portraits of people hating having their picture taken. Obviously there’s a bit of a Catch-22 to that plan.

It's true, it's really a very weird situation. I hate having my photo taken by anyone else, as I almost always look awful if I know my photo is being taken (and sometimes if I don't know!). I think most photographers tend to be the same; they get uncomfortable if they're on the receiving end of the lens, because they don't have complete control over what they're going to end up looking like. Good lighting can go a long way to appease that worry, though! How do you feel about people taking photos of you? Are there any you've liked?

Maybe I should recruit you as my first subject then! You're right, photographers are the worst at having their photos taken. I hate it too and have huge sympathy for my subjects when I'm taking portraits, and endless admiration for people who are comfortable with it. People who think that models are talentless husks simply don't know what they're talking about. I think I've probably got a bit better since I started taking pictures of other people, but I'd still make a terrible model.

I've only taken a handful of self portraits and that was only when there wasn't a model who was available and patient enough to put up with whatever I was experimenting with. And I still can't look at those pictures objectively. In fact, with some I had to flip the image upside down on screen to process it, otherwise I kept getting distracted, thinking "Aaggh, it's me… Aagh, it's me…" It's almost certainly simple vanity, although I find looking at myself in the mirror slightly eerie too.

So no, no one has ever taken a picture of me that I like. They always reek of self-consciousness and gah.

This is a good point to talk about your burgeoning fame as an international street art icon, thanks to French street artist, C215. That must feel quite weird! I found it quite weird when I found out about it, and it wasn't even me it had happened to, but it demonstrated how small the world is sometimes. It felt weird because I'd seen the image on a wall in Brighton, and thought it looked familiar, but it took a random and unexpected comment from your brother on one of my Flickr contacts' photos for me to make the connection. If it was me, I'd probably be trying to find photos of it all over the world, just to see where it had been stencilled. Have you done that? Where was the best place?

You know what, I've not seen a single one the the flesh (paint?), even though the ones in London went up not far from where I live. I have my own copy though, and there are so many photos of them on Flickr that I never actually felt the need to go out myself to see them in situ.

Given how I feel about pictures of me, it does feel a bit weird. I saw that one was sold at his last show in New York, and the idea that a picture of me might be hanging in some fashionable Brooklynite's home feels odd to say the least. But I also feel reasonably disassociated from it. The stencil is such an awesome piece of work in itself that my role in it feels very minor. And as you say, unless you know about it, you're unlikely to make the connection. I might feel differently if I was getting recognised. C215 has made stencils from a few of my pictures, each more mind-blowing than the last. And we're planning a more concerted collaboration this year, so overall I'm very happy that it happened and am looking forward to what's to come.

Oh, cool! That answers one of my next questions, about whether you have any projects or experiments coming up in 2009 that you're excited about. I hope you keep us posted on that when you're ready to talk about it!

Last year, you put together a book — what made you decide to make a book? I've had a few ideas for books myself, and I've really been struggling with choosing the pictures and the layouts. It's not as easy as it looks! How did you choose a theme, and the pictures? Was it an easy process for you?

I first used Blurb to make a book because I'd done the unit photography on a short film called Stiletto, and wanted to give the cast and crew a souvenir. I threw together a simple book of 10x8s and was really impressed with the result. It's also a lot cheaper than getting prints and putting them in an album.

The web is a gift for photographers, but there's still something nice about prints. I've made a few books since for particular projects and having a big big coffee-table book of some of my favourite pictures of London has been a great way to show people a sample of the kind of thing I do without having to dispatch them, URL in hand, to find a computer.

As far as layouts go I'm a believer in keeping it simple. With the London book I selected half of the images to work as a full bleed 13×11, and the other half are cropped to best advantage and sit on the facing page against a black or white background. The hardest part was choosing the order but with a bit of playing around it's surprising how naturally a flow emerges. It's actually a lot of fun.

Buy Jon's book here, and see more of his work on Flickr.

I first got to know Jon through mutual drinking buddies a few years ago. We'd occasionally see each other at the same social events, but it wasn't until we discovered we were both avid users of Flickr that we really became friends. Since then, looking at his street photography and painterly compositions has helped to rekindle my interest in parts of London that had previously seemed clichéd and boring.

Although Jon agreed to be interviewed because it sounded "like a laugh", our correspondence became a fascinating discourse on being bitten by the creative bug, as he made some very interesting and intelligent points about the craft of photography. Each point he made inspired further questions and considerations, many of which were in directions I hadn't even considered. In fact, Jon's answers were so detailed and inspired so many supplemental questions that I've had to split the interview into two parts — and stop asking more questions, or the interview would probably never even have made it this far, even though I could happily have continued the conversation for a while. I'm interested to know what you think about it, as well, so please do leave comments if you have anything to say.

How long have you been taking photos? Who (or what) inspired you to pick up camera?

I’ve always taken snap-shots, like everyone else, but I first picked up an SLR in November 2006. A friend of mine had recently taken it up and was making nice pictures. To be honest, I expected it to be a fad…

You mean that you expected your interest was a fad? So I guess you never expected it to lead to doing photoshoots for other people. How does that feel — is it something you're keen to pursue further?

Yes, I've never been a natural hobbyist, and I half-expected my camera would start gathering dust in a drawer somewhere after a few weeks. I certainly didn't imagine that I'd get to the point where people would pay for my pictures.

I'm still a little ambivalent about doing it for money, or at least I think it can be dangerous to imagine that you can make a living only doing things you enjoy. So on one level I always want to remain an amateur photographer (in the sense of doing it for the love of it), but if I could also make a living using a camera, then I can think of many many less appealing ways of paying the rent.

Who inspires you now?

I’m a big fan of Flickr (and had been for quite a long time before I started taking pictures myself), so I can find almost endless inspiration from countless photographers there. I also love ffffound.com.

I don't often find myself feeling uninspired but when I do, just going for a walk is usually enough to get me excited about taking pictures again. Failing that, the Tate Modern and the British Museum are very photographer-friendly and I rarely leave one or the other without a photo or an idea for a photo.

Flickr is such a great visual resource; I can get lost in there for hours and hours. Who do you like on Flickr? How about some recommendations?

There are so many and I discover new ones every day. Singling individuals out feels capricious but if consistency is a virtue (and I'm not sure it is — there are some killer pictures to be found in some unpromising looking photostreams), and excluding friends of mine who I'm naturally going to feel a bias towards, I'd recommend:

Doyle Shafer
Rob Randerson
Tony Day
madeinsheffield
Sannah Kvist
Jeremy Walker
Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Greg Funnell
Noah Kalina
Jean-François Juteau
Ronya Galka
Sarah Sitkin

I could easily go on, and I'm sure I've missed key people out, but all these guys struggle to take a bad picture. Also, someone who is not on Flickr but is worth a mention because his street photography sets the bar for me, Matt Stuart.

Wow! That's a lot of work, and a lot of other peoples' lives, to look at. Would you describe yourself as a curious person?

Who wouldn't? But, to be honest, I don't think that I'm unusually curious, and when I'm taking pictures I'm curious on quite a superficial level — I'm more interested in how things look than how they are. If I see a nice moment, I almost don't want to know exactly what the story is, because imagining that is part of the pleasure of the picture.

I think that sort of visual experience, where the work speaks for itself in whatever voice the viewer hears, is usually more successful than the kind of conceptual art where you have to know all the reasons behind its creation before you can appreciate it. It's as though there's less ego in it — that the work is the important thing, not its creator. Would you say this is true about your work, or do you think you impose your own ego and personality on it at all?

That's a good question and hard to answer. On the one hand I like pictures that are internally coherent and self-contained, even if they're ambiguous. I think the photographer should arrange the furniture to accommodate an audience, and the viewer shouldn't be required to bring anything to the party. But I know other people disagree with that, and I think there are certain situations (when building a series or collection of pictures, for example) where context is going to be important.

As for ego and the role of the creator, that's tricky too because while I basically agree that the picture is the important thing, not the person who took it, it would be disingenuous to claim that I'm not imposing something on the scene. For me, photography is all about editing. And while a photograph isn't like painting where you start with a blank canvas, it is always extremely selective. As soon as you put a frame around something you're imposing yourself on the scene. And there is a role for ego here — I want to present things that I've seen, that I think are interesting or amusing or beautiful or whatever, and I'll process an image to conjur as closely as possible how I saw it. So in that sense it's all about me me me.

I've read a few interviews with artists who say that their biggest joy is in the creating, not in the finished work. Taking photos is different, isn't it, because the creation of the work often has to happen in a split second to capture a scene before it changes — certainly with street photography, anyway. So, you have to be able to spot events in time to capture them quickly.

Do you think that using a camera has changed the way you look at your surroundings at all? I know that I actively keep an eye out for interesting combinations of shapes and colours since I started to take photos of urban abstracts and focus on small details that often get overlooked. But I don't take many pictures of people in the street, so I feel like I don't have the "eye" yet to find the good shots. Is it just a case of looking from different angles?

You know those actors and directors who say that they never watch their own films once they're finished? Well, I'm nothing like them. I spend more time than I should probably admit looking at my own pictures. So I can't pretend I'm not interested in the finished article. I do enjoy taking photos but I think that's about the promise of getting something good. Although walking around London is a pretty nice way to spend some time.

I don't think using a camera has changed the way I look at my surroundings much, because before I carried a camera everywhere I'd still see things and think, "That'd make a nice photograph". I expect most people do that. I think the difference now is that I think those thoughts more in terms of exposure. I pay less attention to things that will be hard to photograph, and more to scenes that would be photogenic. I never used to loiter around a nice patch of light like I sometimes do now, for example.

As for the photographic "eye", I think quite a lot of guff is talked about it. Taking a photo is like hitting "pause" – I don't think it's a rare instinct. Same with "looking for different angles"; if there's something spoiling your view, you move, don't you?

When you put it like that, it seems obvious! And yet, I still get frustrated when photographs don't come out the way I see them in my head. Many of your photos have a sense of composition that suggests you have quite a considered approach yourself. You also take a lot of candid pictures of strangers, too, so I suppose you must "shoot from the hip" a lot, as well. Which approach do you prefer?

Shooting from the hip is more a matter necessity then preference. If I could freeze time then I’d frame every shot just how I want it, but in reality you have to react quickly when the moments present themselves. I shoot most of my street stuff with a 50mm or 35mm lens and with practice I've got pretty good at aiming and visualising what they're going to see. Sometimes the composition is changed later when cropping, but the arrangement of elements in a scene is often a big part of its initial appeal, so that composition becomes the reason for hitting the shutter. I like actions, faces, gestures and so on, but generally it’s the way they relate to each other that makes the picture.

Thanks Jon!

Tune in later this week for part two….

I first met Gary at the Bristol Comics Festival in 2001, browsing the small press table that was run by Pete Ashton back in his Bugpowder days. I was delighted to discover A Little Box of Comics, which was just what it says: a little box not much bigger than a postage-stamp, with three tiny comics in it, all goofily funny stories about daisy-eating monsters and talking baked beans. As I was excitedly squealing about them to my friends, it transpired that the creator was standing right behind me; looking a bit bashful in the face of such high praise.

A Little Box Of Comics, 2001. [view at actual size here]

The praise is richly deserved, though, as has been proven both by his employment as an in-house illustrator at Eaglemoss Publications, and by his recent success with the creator-owned strips Derek The Sheep in The Beano, and Little Cutie in the DFC.

The Monster Who Enjoyed His Dreams

Gary's simple-looking stories often belie the complicated emotions at the heart of them. His scribbly drawing style has always lent itself well to the madcap antics of silly characters like the monsters and pirates in his early small press comics, Stupidmonsters and Bernard Cribbins' Rousing Tales of Action and Adventure (done with Matt Abbiss), or in the recent funny animal strips mentioned above, but he excels at telling stories, and often with minimal dialogue. Some of his stories, like The Monster Who Enjoyed His Dreams (from Stupidmonsters #4) or Be A Happy, Healthy Dog, his contribution to 2003′s Sentence anthology, can be as likely to move you to tears as the more madcap adventures will make you laugh out loud. As you can tell, I am a fan. I hope after reading this interview, you are, too!

Who/what inspired you to start self-publishing?
GN: For a few years, I worked at an art shop close to Gosh Comics and this exposed me to small press comics by people like Tom Gauld & Simone Lia and Steve Marchant. There was plenty of other weird stuff from Europe and old copies of Caption containing the likes of Lewis Trondheim and Darryl Cunningham. I was also getting into indie American stuff like Hate [by Peter Bagge], Land of Nod [by Jay Stephens] and Tantalising Stories [where Jim Woodring got a start]. So, fired up with inspiration, in my spare time I knocked together my first comic "Great!" and took it to the first Bristol fair in 1999.

Did you always want to do comics?
GN: Pretty much. I've always enjoyed telling stories. My favourite subject at school was English/creative writing, as well as art, and I would always get top marks for my stories. My mum even made me write stories during the summer holidays, which I didn't mind a bit! I was always writing mad stories about superhero dogs or groups of garden birds getting into gang wars (I was a big fan of Hong Kong Phooey and Top Cat).

Back at school they moved me up to the top group for English, based on my good grades, but the new teacher was very unimpressed with my awful handwriting and she forced me to work on that instead of doing any actual creative work, so I quickly fell behind and lost interest in the subject pretty quickly (which is why my grammar is so terrible!).

My other favourite subject was history and I was lucky that sometimes we could draw a comic strip instead of writing an essay. I did this colourful strip about the history of the Spartans and the teacher loved it so much, he made me draw it on two huge A1 sheets and it was on the classroom wall for ages.

from Bernard Cribbins' Rousing Tales Of Action And Adventure, 2005

I guess I should also mention that, as far back as I can remember, I've always loved comics. When I was four, I used to get Disney Weekly delivered, then British Marvels like Planet of The Apes and Captain Britain, to the Beano and Nutty. I was a complete fanatic for comics throughout my entire childhood and would make my own comics by sellotaping pages of my drawings together.

What was your favourite comic (strip) growing up?
GN: Well, alongside my regular delivered weekly comic (whatever it happened to be that month!), I was a huge fan of Peanuts and Asterix. This is going to sound horribly pretentious, but bugger it I don't care; I loved Asterix for all its detailed drawings and detailed world, and Peanuts for all its simplicity. I guess both also had a solid set of recurring friends who would discover the world together, and that always appealed to me. I did try Tintin, the other prominent comic strip of my childhood era, but I thought it was horrible! Half the panels were taken up with speech balloons and it was all a bit too clever-clever for me. Give me a drunken fish-fight in a medieval market, or snoopy arseing about pretending to be a snake!

Derek The Sheep, 2008

How did you get a creator-owned strip running in the Beano? That's a first, isn't it?
GN: To be honest, I'm not entirely sure myself! They offered me the choice and I took it. I don't think it ever happened again in the Beano, but there's been a couple of creator-owned strips in the Dandy since then (most notably Jamie Smart). Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, they don't solicit creator-owned strips anymore, so I've been very lucky.

Why was Derek collected in a French edition (Norbert Le Mouton) before there was a UK one? And why was he renamed Norbert? Was that your idea?
GN: I had an email from a fan who was good friends with the comic translator/writer Harry Morgan. I sent samples to Harry, who really enjoyed the strip and he then put me in touch with Edition De L'an 2. The name "Norbert" had nothing to do with me, but I loved it, so I was happy to go along with it. I'm guessing it's a naff uncle-type name, like Derek, but for French uncles. I don't think anyone is called Derek in France, so that name would never have worked!

Little Cutie, 2008

I can see Derek and Little Cutie working well as animated cartoons. If your work was ever animated, who would you like to cast for the voices?
GN: If I spoke on this subject, someone would come round to my flat and break my legs. So no comment. [Ooh, sounds intriguing! --ed.]

Are you going to self-publish any more mini comics or are you only going to do stuff for established publishers like the Beano and the DFC?
GN: I would love to do more small press comics. I seriously miss making them, but it's all down to time. I barely have enough time to do The Beano, DFC and National Geographic Kids (plus all the other odds and sods that come my way).

a page from Stupidmonsters #2, 2002

There's a lot of great stuff being produced for comics these days. What are you reading at the moment?
Jason's The Last Musketeer, which is definitely his best book since Hey Wait…, my all time favourite, favourite. Manu Larcenet's Ordinary Victories, which Matt Abbiss got me into. A beautiful story, beautifully drawn, which deals with a miserable git trying to deal with real life and the march of time (it spoke volumes to me). A very moving graphic novel indeed. Similarly anything by Michel Rabagliati and his latest Paul Goes Fishing is a very emotional story and exquisitely drawn as always.

I must mention Pieter De Poortere's Joe De Eskimo, which I picked up this year at Angouleme. Very stupid, silent comic strip about an eskimo who gets thrown into prison and goes on mad adventures with his cell-mate polar bear. This is exactly the sort of book I want to draw!

Is there anything done by someone else that you wish you'd had the idea for first?
GN: Joe De Eskimo, as pointed out earlier, and James Turner's Super Animal Adventure Squad from the DFC. I love that strip and wish I'd though of it! Lots of mad creatures running about on madcap spy adventures. Brilliant! I especially wish I'd thought of Agent Beesley.

The Derek The Sheep hardback is now available from all good bookshops. Buy one for everyone who loves The Great Escape, Grange Hill, Ealing comedies and The Simpsons. Which is every right-thinking person on earth, right? There's also a Facebook fan page to stay up-to-date.

To get your weekly fix of UK-created comicky goodness, subscribe to The DFC via the DFC website.

Gary's mini-comics are probably available for a small price from Gary himself if you ask him nicely enough.