8 minute read
The Big Interview
LEFT Jean Paul Gaultier, Spring 2010, paint stick and coloured pencil on paper, 29x42cm
THE BIG INTERVIEW
Chris Gambrell
The Bristol illustrator has brought a fresh perspective to fashion illustration thanks to his sculpture-indebted techniques and his love of wax crayons, as STEVE PILL discovers
While fashions change faster than the seasons, our concept of fashion illustration has largely remained unchanged: look at any designs from the past century and you will often find the same full-length figures striding forward, all rendered with elegant black ink lines and sweeping washes of watercolour.
Even contemporary books, such as Holly Nichols’ Modern Fashion Illustration released this spring, might swap the watercolour brush for a Copic Sketch Marker but ultimately the principles remain the same. It is clear, however, that what we don’t expect to see is awkward, off-the-cuff poses, jarring colour schemes and roughly textured passages of pastel, acrylic and whatever other media can be thrown into the mix.
Yet that is precisely what Chris Gambrell has made his stock in trade as he has risen to the very top of his profession. The 43-year-old artist has caught the eye of the world’s leading tastemakers, leading him to illustrate vintage couture for Vogue, catalogues for Zara, and fashion spreads for magazines as far afield as Brazil, Australia and the US – all while working from home in Bristol, raising his young family. Thankfully, his modest attitude to the fashion industry remains every bit as refreshing as his colourful designs.
“I tend to wear quite comfortable clothes,” he says with a chuckle. “Understated would be the word. I do like to experiment and play on paper though so I can certainly identify with the designers – all the shapes, colours and movement just get me really excited.”
It is this lack of pretension and a wealth of enthusiasm for his craft that has endeared him to clients and the public alike. Chris likes the fact that his framed, gallery pieces tend to not be so far removed from his sketchbook work in terms of the level of finish. “I don’t want to dictate exactly what something is,” he explains. “I like people to play a part in working out what is there or just
ABOVE Sketchbook Work, pastel on paper, 29x42cm
LEFT Sketchbook Work, pastel on paper, 21x29cm assuming shapes and other elements. If I read books, I tend to read short reads, short fiction, something where you bring a bit of yourself to whatever is on offer and you make your own references or draw your own conclusions.”
Sketching has been particularly important to Chris throughout his career. When starting out and still finding his feet with his own style, he would regularly put in the hours going out and drawing people in the streets. He has referred to his sketchbook as his “playground” and that openness and willingness to experiment helped him try out new ideas regularly. Even nowadays, as he admits that family commitments mean less time for getting out, he still makes regular reference to his daily “warm up” sketches – a few quick initial sketchbook entries made before the heavy lifting of his commissioned work commences.
Chris emerged from the University of West England in 2001 with a degree in illustration, yet a more formative experience occurred during his foundation year when he was exploring sculpture in a big way. Many of his influences are not fashion illustrators but rather 20th-century sculptors such as Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brâncusi, and he learned a lot from the way they approached their subjects: “If you are stone carving, you become keenly aware of knocking something off that can’t be put back in – it trains the senses. The work of people like Henry Moore is more about what is removed than what’s actually there, which is something that is really interesting to me. I’d never really thought about focusing on what’s not there before that.”
Through sculpture, Chris learned to think about negative space and to treat drawing as “a reductive process, taking things away to reveal forms”; all skills that have helped him to avoid overworking drawings and maintain an economical approach to mark making. Of course, what sculpture so often lacks is colour – or at least any chromatic variety – and it is a surprise to hear that it was only more recently that Chris stopped working in monochrome after encouragement from an artist friend.
“I use colour in quite a simple way,” he admits. “I tend to use colours that jar slightly and then soften them out. These days, my usual starting point is to start [a drawing] with two complementary, quite high contrast colours that naturally reverberate against each other and then work out from there. I might use maybe a red and a green, but then move to the side of that green to a blue just to soften things slightly. That’s the extent of my colour theory and application.”
Chris likens the process of painting to “one-pot cooking” – rather than starting in one corner and working
BELOW Sketchbook Work, pastel on paper, 29x42cm
Instagram is empowering for artists… It’s possible to brand yourself and really put yourself out there now
across the page, he prefers to develop everything simultaneously, keeping things moving until he is happy with the overall combination. “That’s why I use soft pastel or acrylic, just because you can get back in there and change the colours, so I don’t have to commit to anything. I find that liberating and exciting – and that’s what I want from my work.”
Prior to settling again in Bristol, Chris hadn’t always been so sure about his practice. A large commission for Bristol’s Tobacco Factory came just as he was graduating, which helped set him on the path of commercial illustration. A move to Barcelona in 2004 coincided with a commission to illustrate a men’s catalogue for the Spanish fashion brand Zara, yet Chris soon suffered something of a crisis of confidence in the vibrant city. “There was art on every corner and so many artists around,” he recalls. “I was probably a bit overwhelmed really.”
He became invested instead in teaching English as a foreign language, moving with his partner to Japan for a couple of years before a stint in Madrid where his first child was born.
Once back in Bristol with his young family, the urge to create returned. “I realised how much I was missing producing things, just the routine of drawing and observing things around me,” he recalls.
Taking part in a local art trail gave Chris the confidence to begin producing and selling personal work, yet it was Instagram, the imagesharing social media network, that really helped him find his feet as an illustrator again in 2016. “Instagram is quite empowering for artists and people working commercially,” he says. “I’d be interested to have a bit of a discussion with other people working in the industry as to what the [illustration] agencies offer that people can’t get directly now. It’s possible to brand yourself and really put yourself out there now, so I think more people are working directly with clients – and that’s certainly what I’ve done.”
One person who connected with his work at that time was Laird BorrelliPersson, the archive editor at Vogue magazine. She reached out to Chris to
share her enthusiasm for his work and pledged to work with him when the opportunity arose. That finally came together last year as he became one of seven illustrators tasked with delving into the Vogue Runway archives and choosing a favourite piece of couture to draw. It was a “bucket list” commission and, after obsessing over the decision, Chris eventually picked out a selection from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring 2010 collection.
The accompanying article praised the Bristol illustrator’s ability to “convey character through the smallest gestures”, while he also lifted the lid on his processes in trademark fashion, revealing that he had used something as mundane as a wax crayon for this most prestigious of publications.
Chris has also used his Instagram as a means to promote his side career as a portrait artist for hire, currently charging £260 for a bespoke A3 drawing. His atmospheric approach can be seen in the likeness of Artemisia Gentileschi adorning the cover of a recent biography of the overlooked Baroque artist.
ABOVE Sketchbook Work, pastel on mid-tone paper, 29x42cm
LEFT Based on a Roland Mouret Look, pastel on paper, 29x42cm
Next year Chris is making a return to teaching abroad, though this time the subject will be art rather than language. He is set to return to Madrid in February to host a threeday pastel and acrylic drawing workshop with Talleres Piolas. His philosophy when it comes to teaching is to not be too prescriptive.
“I just want to give some guiding principles and some practical advice,” he says. “It’s important for people to know how to make marks and how to get shapes to the place they want them to be. I hate the word ‘correct’, but things like scaling, proportions… It’s important to introduce methods for that.”
“I don’t like the idea that people could just step into exactly what you do and produce what you do,” he adds. “I think everybody has got their own individual voice and it’s about celebrating that. If you can give them the principles to convey that voice, then that’s a pretty good place to be.” To commission a portrait from Chris, please contact him via www.instagram. com/gambrell_
