Illustration We Love: Ed Cheverton
Ed Cheverton is a Bristol based artist and illustrator that we love so much that we invited him to be part of our upcoming exhibition: Dream Safari. His work is playfully abstract and colourful ranging across collage work, comics, toys and animation. Read on to find out more about him…
1. Talk us through a typical day in the life of Ed Cheverton
After exiting my re-energizing sleep chamber I begin the day with caffeine supplement 5B and a bowl of Tridorian Oatmeal. I then check the day sat-casts for system news and communiqués, responding to any urgent request from passing ships and stations on the homeworlds. I then enter my workshop. The morning is spent warming up the colour dye injectors, loading the sonic cutters with pulp sheets and uploading designs made during the previous night’s dream visions into the central computer. For the rest of the day these designs are processed through the workshop’s machines ending with finished works in the collector bins. They are then collated and sorted for quality control by my personal A.I. Grexzor TB89. Acceptable works are fed back into central computer for categorisation and dispersal to the rest of the system. I end my day catching up on the latests bot-soaps being cast from Phrandal IV and eating one of Federal approved meals 44A-53A before returning to my sleep chamber.
2. Where would you go and what would you do on a dream holiday?
I actually just returned from it! Me and my partner spent a long weekend in Berlin and it was amazing. We mostly were walking around exploring all the neighbourhoods, relaxing in the very good parks (Tempelhof is my favourite park i’ve ever been to) and eating some super tasty food. I always love visiting a new city and discovering all the small intricacies of the day to day life there. Beaches are boring and full of sand.
3. Word on the street is you’re a jazz fan. What three albums would you rescue from a burning jazz jukebox?
Yikes, It’s too hard to narrow it down to three. I recently started a weekly(ish) recommendation playlist called Jazz Factory Recommends on Spotify. It’s a curated selection of some of my favourite albums and tracks that I think are really worth sharing and talking about. So I guess I’d want to save anything listed there?
4. Where would you take us on a fun day out in Bristol?
In no particular order: walk over the Suspension Bridge, walk around the harbourside, check out the Arnolfini and Spike Island art galleries, explore Gloucester Road and Stokes Croft. Get some bubble tea at Cupp and some cider at the Apple Cider Boat. Visit Trylla on North Street, my friend Alice Astbury’s beautiful art shop. Get a pie for dinner at the Windmill pub cos it’s close to my house and I won’t have to walk far home.
5. It says on your about page that you like to read comics, what are your faves?
Seth will forever be my number one favourite artist. Before I went to Uni I only really was aware of and read superhero stuff, alongside a bit of Vertigo, but then my friend Nick Edwards introduced me to Seth and opened up the world of alternative comics. I love Seth’s style of storytelling, especially in Wimbledon Green; building a narrative and character through small vignettes, interviews with other characters and very short scenes. His drawing is also nothing short of exquisite. I’m also a huge fan of Yuichi Yokoyama, his storytelling is very direct and linear but almost dreamlike and it unfailingly draws me into this uncanny world of odd structures and even more odd characters. I think he is a master of page composition also. Wai Wai Pang made a completely wonderful comic with Peow last year called Ripples, it’s a detective story about finding a missing child, but again has these little vignettes and pages of wonderfully detailed visual information that tell much more of the story.
6. You always seem to be producing lots of work. What keeps you going? How do you stay motivated?
I’ve always found making art to be one of the single most enjoyable things in my life, so that’s kind of the best motivation I guess. I think also what I’m researching at the moment will feed into my work and motivate me to want to make work about it. During Uni that was Jazz music, for the past couple of years it’s been Space Science and optimistic Science Fiction.
7. Your comic “One and the Dawn of Reality” looks beautiful. Where do you start when you’re making your comic books?
This is very varied depending on the book. For “One” I wrote the text first and spent a long time getting that right before I started laying out and drawing the pages for it. That book was very writing driven. The same can be said for short Humans Vs. God in Seven Stories No.1 published by O Panda Gordo. I’m usually really pleased with the story here but the art might not integrate as well with it as I want. Other times I’ve had a very vague plot in my head and then taken it page by page, writing and drawing at the same time. This is a really pleasant way of making a comic but I think I do lose my way at times and it might not read as succinctly. I guess I need to find a balance between the two ways?
Roll Up! Roll Up! from Edward Cheverton on Vimeo.
8. Are you a tea drinker or a coffee sipper?
Coffee, no more than one or two a day though
9. What’s your dream project?
I’d love love love to design a jazz album cover, or even a series of covers for a re-issue of some old albums.
Thanks for chatting with us Ed! He also kindly shared some sketchbook pages with us:
Ed will be tabling at ELCAF this weekend (22-24th June) but if you can’t make that you can see his beautiful collages in our upcoming exhibition Dream Safari next month in Brighton. RSVP to the FB event here.
Follow him on instagram @edcheverton and twitter @edcheverton. See his full portfolio here.