Steven Appleby is one of Britain’s best-loved cartoonists and illustrators, with a regular cartoon in the Saturday Guardian and previous work in the Times and the Sunday Telegraph. He talks to Tara Wheeler about the early days of his career, how he found his drawing style and the importance of daydreaming…
Have you always known that illustrating, cartooning and writing was what you wanted to do?
Not exactly. I always knew I wanted to do something creative. I liked to draw as a kid and I loved cartoons. I think I wanted to write first. After that I wanted to play in a band. I went to art college for about a year and got into a band. We tried to make it for a couple of years, without any success.
When did you feel you’d found your drawing style and how did it develop?
I went back to art college after the band, I was doing graphic design and it included illustration. I was trying to find a style. I wanted to do expressionistic, dark, disturbing, scary work. I remember doing one brief and instead of finding it disturbing, everyone just laughed. I thought I was trying to tap into some kind of primal psychological thing and they all just laughed! So I think my work is inherently humorous somehow. Trying to do that sort of expressionistic, dark, scary work, I didn’t like the way I drew – I didn’t like my natural way of drawing. But eventually I realised you have to sort of live with your own handwriting. The weird thing is – I was looking back at some work I’d done at school, where I’d made this animated film and the style is amazingly similar to my style now.
How did you get into illustrating and cartooning?
When I got to London I ended up doing freelance illustration work for people, like the New Musical Express. They asked me to do a strip [which would become Captain Star] so that’s where becoming a cartoonist started really, kind of by accident.
What would your advice be to people hoping to build a career in cartooning, illustration or the creative fields in general?
Go for it. Follow your instincts. Don’t imitate anyone else. You have to deliver when people give you an opportunity. When your luck arrives you have to deliver something good, on time – and if you’re reliable and do something good on time, I think you can make a career. There is luck involved but you can kind of help the luck along by sending out work and promoting yourself.
Tell us about your creative processes...
The process is to try and get myself in the right frame of mind. There are things that help, like going to a cafe, sitting there daydreaming. Another thing I do when I’m writing is to go up to a cottage on my own and lie in the bath. With commercial jobs there’s often not the time to do that, so I come to the studio and I sit there and I kind of rotate the jobs in my mind. I’ll think about one and if nothing’s coming I’ll move onto another. The morning is best for me. I try to relax, have a cup of coffee and to daydream the ideas more than anything else.
Steven’s new book, The Coffee Table Book of Doom (with co-author Art Lester), is out now.