Gus Gordon and Tristan Bancks

THURSDAY

Illustrator Gus Gordon was a natural choice to illustrate My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up. We set him loose on the book with very little guidance and he became the other half of Tom Weekly's brain. Here he gives insight into an illustration process that reflected his own childhood.

 

In Gus's words:

Tom Weekly reminded me very much of my 12-year-old self. It wasn’t too difficult a task to channel the random thoughts of that younger, fantastically naïve, enthusiastic, imaginative boy as it is pretty much how I am today. I still, like Tom, daydream about incredible situations and still have the propensity to think in a random, fractured manner, jumping from thought to thought with no real segue as if I am picking my thoughts out of a hat. Drawing for me was the most efficient way of communicating these unorganised ideas. Off-kilter illustrations and pointless list writing were a speciality of mine. I drew in every class, in every margin on everything and anything I had in front of me. This kind of fervour – the need to express myself through drawing – was how I approached the illustrations, or more specifically, how I saw Tom drawing them – a natural extension of his rambling imagination.

The subjects (awkward encounters, gross bodily functions, eating, girls) were also all too familiar to me. Whether it was a panicked list about an operation, escaping false teeth or a drawing of a floating poo, it all felt disturbingly normal. Obviously it was the same for Tom!

Tomorrow, designer Astred Hicks from Design Cherry takes us inside the unconventional design and layout of the book in all its crumple-paged, coffee-stained glory.

[caption id="attachment_2710" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Gus Gordon, Illustrator"][/caption]

www.gusgordon.com

www.tristanbancks.com