I was introduced to Ian Stevenson a couple of weeks ago when I was reviewing the 100 Minutes of Havana draw-off (his team lost in case you were interested) and he very kindly agreed to meet me for an interview. Ian is known for his strange yet charming drawings, often infused with his trademark deadpan humour. One only has to look as far as his website welcome page, which opens on a SALE sign, but with the sale crossed out and “EVERYTHING FULL PRICE” scrawled in black underneath. Both funny and depressing considering our current economic climate.

I meet Ian outside Concrete Hermit on Club Row and he passes me a cardboard tube, which I discover when I excitedly rip it open, has an amazing print of his work in it. Yes Mr Stevenson, bribery will get you everywhere! We have a leisurely stroll down to Brick Lane towards The Big Chill and the icing on the (purely metaphorical) cake is when on the walk I discover that he is as lovely and funny as his drawings.

Despite now enjoying measurable success Ian Stevenson didn’t have a straightforward route to illustration. He tells me that he started on an architecture degree but quit after he found he didn’t enjoy it, “after about two weeks something clicked and I thought, this isn’t right.” He then went on to do a foundation before finally returning to do a BA at Camberwell, but in graphic design. “It wasn’t a typical course, we didn’t learn type layout and we’d get projects that were one word, so the title might be fly spray. That’s one of the things I learnt from college, how to not let having no boundaries scare you.”

After finishing university Ian worked at a graphic design company, for a few years. “It’s the best kind of graphic design job, because we designed T-shirts, animation characters and things.” Not surprisingly for such an obviously creative person Ian became disillusioned with the graphic design world and left, “I was just a bit annoyed, bored by the whole industry and how people follow trends. Not that it was anything to do with the company, but it was just so boring.”

Ian’s break came after leaving graphic design when he began to draw in sketchbooks eventually putting them on a website. “A few friends said “Oh you should do some more of that” so I did some more of that. I slowly started to think that I should develop that further.” His first illustration job came when Mother advertising agency asked him to draw in the women’s toilets at their offices. “I’d never drawn on a wall before, but just said yes. Most of the time with a job even if you can’t do it you say “yes”. When someone says can you do this you say, “yes of course I can” and then you think oh, actually can I?”
Ian Stevenson doesn’t appear to have any of the usual embarrassingly bad early work like the rest of us creatives. Despite being one of the earliest illustration projects he did one can see that, while the drawings are perhaps not as developed, they are just as funny and as brilliant as his more recent work.

It wasn’t always quite as easy as it sounds to get work as an illustrator. “You do sit on your own for long periods of time thinking. “Where are they? When are they coming, where are the people?” “At the start it did hurt, because there weren’t many people doing it.” Luckily it would seem those feelings are a thing of the past as people are definitely taking notice of Ian Stevenson. He exhibits here in London and internationally, the most recent an exhibition called Pens on Paper in Paris, with Pictoplasma. “There were lots of artists invited who draw on paper and I did eight drawings. They also asked me to do some more work for another event called Pictopia so I did eighteen drawings from magazines They also screened Staring in to the Sun, a music video animation which Ian is promoting on his website.

As well as exhibiting, success can also be marked by the fact that Ian’s recently gained representation by BLUNT, who have a number of really good artists on their books. I ask Ian why he decided to get representation; he gives me an amusingly blunt answer “Even if you’re perfectly capable of the job they still like to be reassured that you’re with someone who is more adult. Someone with letter headed paper.”

But it’s not only BLUNT and the people curating exhibitions who appreciate Ian Stevenson. A quick look at The Drawing Adventure, an animation he’s posted on Youtube, unearths three pages of comments. My favourites are, “This is special stuff”, “Thank you for putting this in my life” and “Your drawings are like crack to me” high praise indeed.
“If they do appreciate it, which hopefully they do, then that’s nice because otherwise I’d be sat in a room doing it, but no one would like it and that would be quite sad. It is nice when people do like it because it means I’m not completely mental. Yeah, It makes me smile inside… can I say that?” He asks me with a smile that suggests he knows he just committed an interview faux pa.

I was first introduced to Ian’s work at his Lost Heroes exhibition he did in Concrete Hermit and I can’t resist the chance to ask the artist directly about the show, “Imagine a world which is full of Disney characters and they’re real people, but then you have to think that there is a casting for Mickey Mouse, imagine all the people that didn’t get the role as Mickey Mouse.” The result of this concept is a series of not-quite-right drawings of well-recognised characters. There’s Bambi, except he’s slightly cross-eyed and a wannabe Donald Duck but one of his legs is twice the size of the other.

In many ways it would seem Ian works in a similar way to the documentary photographers’ earnest plight to photograph the marginalised members of society. But it’s way funnier, because it’s a community reach programme for drawings. “People might say they’re weird but I might say they’re weird. What I’ve said in the past is that it’s my head, my mind on paper.” So in this way Ian is closer to a novelist constantly thinking about and attempting to understand his characters. This is further evident when we talk about another of his drawings, this time of Pacman’s brother (who works in a supermarket). Ian Explains, “He might have a brother, but he’s not famous. Pacman’s got to have a mum and dad. Doesn’t he?”

With such personal, handcrafted drawings it’s no surprise that Ian isn’t a fan of the increase of computer generated images in illustration. “I don’t like them!” He exclaims before launching into more detail, “That’s what I wanted to get away from…. these computer created characters that have no soul and anyone can do. They’re just a bunch of shapes. With uniform eyes and everything is symmetrical and I just get bored. Maybe one has a big arm, and they seem to have a bit more life…. I’d want to talk to those more than to some kind of egg with eyes that are perfect.”

To try and see what it is that Ian does like I ask him what illustrators he rates, “Can I say there is a lot of people I don’t like?” After some gentle coercing and promises that I won’t name names Ian explains a few of the things that frustrates him about the illustration scene. “Trendy things, yeah that’s bad, anyone that started doing things because it’s now more successful than it was, that’s bad… It’s bad! I draw, and I do it because that’s what I wanted to do. There wasn’t anyone doing this in their advertising campaigns and now over the last three years lots of people have started doing it and sometimes it just makes me want to stop doing it. There should be an artists/illustrators union where if someone does copy they’re brought to some kind of court. We’ll go to Gordon and say “look this is important. I know it isn’t important to you or relevant to the global economic downturn. It’s not war, but it means a lot to me!”

Ian Stevenson for Prime Minister, quick someone start a Facebook group now! - Written by Chloe Stead

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