Skwigly Banner – April 2014: Andy Sanders
April already eh? Well, in place of April fools we have the year round tomfoolery of Andy Sanders, best known for his “Balloon Baby” work.
The simplistic style of Sanders often employs works with both a simple one liner or a heaving landscape of jokes and ideas.
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The Ballon Baby characters have varied in style and have populated singular jokes, storybooks and enormous “Bayeux Tapestry” style works like the images above, which is just one part of a huge dreamscape. As well as the Balloon baby work Sanders has worked on different projects and comics over the years, you can follow his work on his website Grande Champignon.
Like most creatives Andy hasn’t exactly had his style handed to him on a plate, here he is in his own words.
“The single thing that’s had the biggest effect on my work as an illustrator came shortly after I finished my degree. I managed to get a collapsed lung at the age of 21: It wasn’t monumental because it lead to any life or death epiphany (those are hard to come by when you’re sat in an NHS ward with vomit on the walls and drunks singing Bohemian Rhaposody in the toilets) but because it gave me a whole week to just sit away from the pressures of preparing for my Masters and trying to find a job. I sat there with some very pleasant pain killers coarsing through my system and drew whatever the hell I wanted. And the stuff I produced wasn’t remotely like the work I’d been creating in the previous three years at university; it was simple, crudely drawn characters that looked a lot like what I drew at the age of five – before the Simpsons or Family Guy seeped into my concious and influenced my style. I still keep all the sketches I did in that hospital stay because they still feel so refreshingly honest and different to create.”
I’m really drawn to the idea of trying to say a lot with as little as possible: hence the minimalism.
My sketchbook is full of heavily simplified drawings: sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t seem to go where I want them to: It’s a bit like trying to build a visual haiku through drawings.
I’m looking to take my work into new directions – I’m curious to explore digital picturebooks and the potential that they have going forwards. Trying to get the ideas in your head onto paper sometimes feels like trying to catch a black cat in a darker room. Only the cat’s actually made of wind and you’ve got no arms.
A selection of covers to a series of hilarious hand printed picture books that take influence from life can be viewed in our gallery below. These books were on sale in Waterstones, but it looks like you’ve missed out now doesn’t it? Sorry.
