ko www.​kris​tianol​son.com

If you could not use a com­puter; would you be able to create the level of detail you pro­duce in your work?

This is a great ques­tion. I haven’t been able to address this in an inter­view yet. My answer might turn into a little bit of a rant. You have my apolo­gies in advance.

Here’s the short answer: No. I could not do what I am doing using tra­di­tional tools. I am not a masochist.

The long answer is: I have made an inten­tional effort to create a style that is unique, orig­i­nal and dif­fi­cult to repro­duce, while also being honest to my own cre­ative lean­ings. The com­puter seemed to be the best medium to pursue this because it is still so new and so wide open for exper­i­men­ta­tion. I made a deci­sion while I was coming out of my graphic design career to stick with dig­i­tal media even though my per­sonal illustrative/fine-art endeav­ours had always been with paint and/or pencil. While cre­at­ing dig­i­tal work for my design clients, I would often stum­ble upon some new process or tech­nique in Pho­to­shop or Illus­tra­tor that I would remem­ber. I had a folder in which I would save screen grabs taken from any inter­est­ing results of processes that I dis­cov­ered. This was really the begin­ning of that deci­sion to stick with the com­puter as my medium of choice– it has always been an excit­ing thing to explore.

So, over the years I’ve been slowly build­ing up my own bag of dig­i­tal tricks. Most artists do this at some point with their chosen medium. This allows them to focus and per­fect their skills in that medium, which means they neglect others. There is noth­ing unusual about this. Com­par­ing the skill set involved in dig­i­tal art with those of tra­di­tional media is almost like com­par­ing pho­tog­ra­phy and tra­di­tional art. Do people ask pho­tog­ra­phers if they could do what they do with paint? All three of these media involve very dif­fer­ent tools. But they are all visual tools and com­pete for many of the same clients, buyers, view­ers, col­lec­tors, etc. I will say, how­ever, that dig­i­tal illus­tra­tors still need to have an under­stand­ing of how to repro­duce fig­ures, objects, and envi­ron­ments with their tools, just as tra­di­tional artists do. That’s why know­ing how to draw and paint can’t hurt. But I dis­agree with the atti­tude that a dig­i­tal artist, for some reason, needs to prove him/herself by being able to paint. Skill and ded­i­ca­tion are appar­ent regard­less of medium.

And yes, some­times I overdo it and have to remove things that don’t work; specif­i­cally, back­ground pat­terns and border ele­ments, although I haven’t been doing a lot of border work lately.

You have been accepted into the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts Illus­tra­tion Annual twice, along with a number of other annu­als. You have also been fea­tured as a spot­light artist in MacUser, Com­puter Arts, Design Taxi and on Illus­tra­tion Mundo, and to top it off in 2006 you were chosen as the cover artist for The Graphic Artists’ Guild’s Direc­tory of Illus­tra­tion #23. How the hell did all that happen with only 3 years as a pro­fes­sional Artist under your belt?

Well… it’s prob­a­bly going on four years now.

It has been a lot of hard work and risk. There was a time, right after the dot com crash, when my graphic design work became sparse. At that point I decided to reassess my career. I told myself, “Either you’re going to go for it or your not. What do you really want to do?” It was a simple, but risky answer: I decided to go for it. I had grown up draw­ing and paint­ing, and had decided in high school that I wanted to be a pro­fes­sional artist. So I seized the oppor­tu­nity. It was a bit of a strug­gle for a while. I spent sev­eral years exper­i­ment­ing and pin­ning down a style before I started to market myself as an illus­tra­tor. During that time I was still trying to pull in design work to pay the bills. Once I actu­ally got my illus­tra­tion work out there, it was still hard (even after get­ting into Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Arts). My tech­niques were still evolv­ing. My port­fo­lio was lim­ited. But I just ploughed ahead. I would create projects for myself if no client work was coming in. I built my own web­sites. I sent out promos… which, when I look back on them, were pretty bad. I also learned to be thrifty. It finally started to pick up when I was about a year into it. My work was accepted into a few more annu­als. Then about two years ago I got a rep, which helped quite a bit.

What is the longest amount of time you’ve spent on a single image?

Early on, things took longer because I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants. I wasn’t totally solid with my tech­niques. I remem­ber one of my per­sonal pieces took about two months to finish once. But that’s not full time… So maybe one month full time. A client piece might have taken two weeks. Now each piece takes between two and ten days. But I’m plan­ning on doing some fine art pieces this year that will prob­a­bly take quite a bit longer.

I never call it a day on client work. I will stay up as late as I have to for a client, which is some­times all night. Usu­ally that doesn’t happen because I can tell, in advance, how much time some­thing will take and plan for it.

Apart from Art and illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

Surf­ing, fish­ing, camp­ing, hiking, trav­el­ling, good food, beer, wine, music, hang­ing out with friends and family. And think­ing too much. I’m sort of an arm­chair philoso­pher, as I think many artists are.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Lari Pitman, Chris Ware, Robert Hard­grave (farmer bob), Jeremy Pruitt (thinkmule), Skwak, Led­pants, Scott Saw, Tim McCormic, Chris Buzelli, Joel Naka­mura, Ray Caesar, Chris­t­ian North­east, Gary Taxali, Alessan­dro Bavari, Doug Murphy, Klaus Haa­paniemi, Chiho Aoshima, Wilson Hsu, Sourkids, Aeron Alfrey, Nik Ainley, Jesse Lefkowitz.

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

Doug Murphy (aka Plas­tic God) and I are coming up with a top secret collab. I’m also in the process of brain­storm­ing with Erika Rand, a Berke­ley based cre­ative direc­tor, fil­mo­g­ra­pher and designer, about a book project. And I am work­ing on some­thing with Aeron Alfrey.

I would love to work with anyone I just men­tioned above in the last question.

What is existence?

Yikes, young grasshop­per, what have you been smok­ing? What is the sound of one clam nap­ping? You must have read my bio awhile back. But thanks for let­ting me inflict you with an answer. Feel free to laugh.

If you ask what is “Is” (which is what you are asking), or what is “being”, you will not under­stand the answer because the answer cannot be described, much less expe­ri­enced, via lan­guage or ratio­nal thought as we move through this time-​based “reality”. Exis­tence does not need time and so cannot be fully under­stood from within time. Time wants you to think that every­thing must flow from A to B, but exis­tence only needs A and does not nec­es­sar­ily “know” of B. So the ques­tion is, “What is A?” But we live in both worlds and cannot under­stand one with­out the other. We can con­ceive of it, but we find it dif­fi­cult to expe­ri­ence it in its pure form, with­out time, and there­fore “understand” it. (Which is a hor­ri­ble word to use for such an irra­tional thing as existence.)

How’s that? I’ll come up with a com­pletely con­tra­dic­tory answer tomor­row. By the end of the week both answers will be shak­ing hands and laugh­ing at each other.

“De do do do de da da da Is all I want to say to you.”

What’s next in the pipeline for Kris­t­ian Olson?

Mucho pro­mo­tional effort this year, plus more fine art. I’m trying to really nail my mixed media tech­niques for the gallery scene. I might also be doing some very lim­ited edi­tion, strictly dig­i­tal prints, like one of a kind, or two of a kind… some­thing like that. They’ll come with a doc­u­ment that is signed and says that I will be put to death if I ever pump out any more. (You know… for the col­lec­tors.) I’m also think­ing about doing some hand made books, or maybe a series of them. ALSO! On Feb­ru­ary 22nd, I, along with sev­eral other artists, will be sign­ing lim­ited edi­tion Thun­der­mutts at Munkyk­ing on Melrose.

Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent or Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey?

I’ve seen both, but I only remem­ber the first one. So it must have been better… or maybe I was just in a better mood for the second one and that’s why I don’t remem­ber it.

Fruit or veg?

Raw fruit. Cooked veggies… except for let­tuce. Let­tuce should only be eaten raw. Oh… and jicama should be raw… or sup­pos­edly boiled, which I have not tried because it sounds awful.

You can see more of Kris­t­ian Olson’s work at
www.​kris​tianol​son.com

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Tags: Alessandro Bavari, Berkeley, Chris Buzelli, Chris Ware, Christian Northeast, digital media, Doug Murphy, Doug Murphy (Plastic God), Erika Rand, food, Gary Taxali, Graphic Artists' Guild, Interviews, Jeremy Pruitt, Jesse Lefkowitz, Joel Nakamura, Klaus Haapaniemi, Kristian Olson, Lari Pitman, mixed media techniques, paint, Ray Caesar, Robert Hardgrave, Scott Saw, Surfing, Tim McCormic, visual tools, Wilson Hsu, www.kristianolson.com