The Ladies and Gentlemen (but mainly Ladies) of Aly Fell

10th November 2009

Aly Fell (a.k.a Poshspice) can be found in several arty places about the web shaming us lesser mortals with his talent with a stylus. As well as maintaining his own blog and site he also runs 'character of the week' on concept art.org. His work has been printed in several publications of repute; including Imagine FX and upon several book covers. He has been also known to make computer games for a living. AE ask him about his artistic approach, influences and what he thinks of all this Steampunk nonsense. So with no further a do on with the questions...

Ice Princess (wip)

Aly, the Goth element in your work is clearly evident, would you say your Steampunk inspired images are a natural migration over from this?

I drifted into the Goth scene after college really one way or another, always having been a bit of a rocker. My wife used to sing in an eighties Goth band, although no-one used that word then. And I’ve always been interested in Victorian art, clothes and fiction. Dressing up in pseudo Victorian clothes has always been part of ‘the look’ so beautifully refined by Dave Vanian in The Damned, so Steampunk really was a natural progression, or if not progression then it certainly defined something that was always there.

So what’s the average time you spend on a piece of work and what are the tools of your trade?

There is no average time really. Sketches can be very quick and spontaneous, but I’ll spend ages on the face and kind of ‘spread-out’ from there. I have spent weeks on a piece! But I’m less concerned with rendering these days, and more with getting the information down as quickly as possible whilst the thought processes are still fresh. My earlier pieces were pretty detailed, but I prefer a more immediate approach these days. That may go against the ‘Steampunk’ aesthetic of ‘God (or maybe the Devil) is in the detail’ but I prefer detail these days where it matters, certainly in art.

I use Photoshop. A lot of people go, ‘oh right, it’s Photoshop’, dismissively, as if the application produces the art for you. I paint totally from scratch in the program. I sketch out the rough and paint up from a blank ‘canvas’ on a digital drawing board. Essentially I draw directly into Photoshop, so the process is the same as traditional techniques, but just digital. I trained traditionally, but these days my traditional techniques are limited to pencil work. I rarely touch media like oils, but it is now something I want to get into.

Which artists ,masters and/or contemporary, would you site as major influences in your work and what have you learnt by studying them?

I have so many artists I admire. I’m a huge fan of artists like Jon Foster, Ian McCaig, Mark Ryden, Glen Orbik, Adam Hughes, Craig Elliott, Robert McGinnis, Arthur Rackham, Gil Elvgren, Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, I could really go on..! I also love Victorian art, J W Waterhouse, the Pre-Raphaelites etc, but I’m probably in the minority, in thinking Duchamp’s urinal was incredibly important as a piece of work! All art is relevant. Opinions are actually pretty unimportant as to whether art is good or bad. If art is relevant to you then it becomes important. It’s all part of a pantheon of creativity, and I find people who dismiss art because they don’t like it kind of miss the point. Their prejudice is more often a dislike of the artist themselves or the critics who artificially raise someone to an absurd pedestal.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Inspiration comes from everywhere! What I read, watch, listen to, meet... all become grist to the creative mill. I also read a lot of Victorian and Edwardian fiction. Of course I love HG Wells and Jules Verne, but I collect H Rider Haggard whom my father introduced me to. Some of it is very dated, but Haggard was incredibly advanced for a Victorian in his attitudes to the wider world. But my wife is a Sherlock Holmes obsessive, and she got me very interested in Conan Doyle and the world of Holmes and Watson. Holmes is fascinating and complicated, and the books and stories are so accessible to the modern reader, having barely dated in over 100 years. However, my favourite author is John Wyndham. I read ‘The Day of the Triffids’ as a child and went through everything he wrote as my parents had all his books in the old orange covered Penguin editions.

But of course I love drawing girls. Classic pin-up is an enormous inspiration, to me, but I like to put my own twist on things. When I start a picture its path can often change, and sometimes there is a bit of serendipity about it. For example I recently finished an image called Vicky the Winter Witch, not a Steampunk one, but it started out as a personification of Winter. I wasn’t able to finish it on time, so I turned the image into a Hallowe’en character.

I rarely use reference for the pose and general roughing out. However, if I can’t get something right from imagination I seek out appropriate reference. I use my own hands a lot, which is why I draw fairly masculine ones on all my characters! I’ll sometimes look at lighting to get shadows right etc. But reference is just that, reference. Follow it too closely and you lose your own energy. And often copied photography can bizarrely look wrong when interpreted in an image which has your own stylised twist on it. I try and give ‘my girls’ a real personality, and something that suggests they exist in a world they control.

Judith

Where did you train?

I did A level art at school, constantly being told by my teacher I was too cartoony and shouldn’t put black lines round anything or I wouldn’t pass. I got an A! This was a theme that followed me to college, (after an art foundation course), where my tutor told me to stop drawing silly little animals all the time. (I was mad about Brian Froud and Alan Lee then, and would draw fairies, elves and goblins a lot.) I got a job after college drawing silly little animals all day long, at Cosgrove Hall working on shows like Count Duckula and the last ever series of Dangermouse. I think the thing for me about College was the way you are geared up for one thing, and they try to alter your enthusiasm toward what they think is right not what you essentially want or may be passionate about. What I mean by that is I chose graphic design because you could opt for illustration in the second year. The tutors were all from advertising or fine art backgrounds, and were pushing the students into graphic design or advertising as a career. There was no specialist illustrator to guide my hand. It was pure chance that a Cosgrove Hall employee happened to be there on a day I returned with a revised portfolio, and actually saw it. He liked my silly little animals, and the increasing amount of girls!

What’s the best piece of advice someone has given you regarding creating art?

To be honest, I don’t know. That’s a tricky question, but something I do know, is enjoy yourself in your art. Be inspired and hope to inspire.

How do you see Steampunk developing within your own work as well as in general?

As far as my own work is concerned, I think there will often be an element of Steampunk within it as there already was before the movement found a name. Victorian with a ‘tech’ twist... The inspiration that is Steampunk is an amalgam of a lot of already existing themes that have found a rather wonderful umbrella to be under: an example being within the Goth scene. Many of the ‘Victorian’ themed styles in the Goth world have just been given a little twist to become Steampunk. Quite fun really, as who’d have thought Goths would go for ‘brown’ and ‘brass’ in any way! However it does concern me a little that it is just another phase, a temporary interest that is just this week’s fashion. The same way cyberpunk was everywhere for a couple of years. Steampunk is fantastically inspirational, but the elements that make it inspiring have always been there, and will continue to be so regardless of whether it has a name or not.

Crash Site Sketch

If you want to find out more about Aly and his art check out Port Out Starboard Home (his blog) or wonder over to Dark Rising. It's also worth a look over on Conceptart.org to see his work on character of the week. It's not all Steampunk but there will probably be some painted ladies.

All art used with permission from Aly Fell.