16 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mark  |  February 1st, 2010 at 1:45 pm

  DOPE! Where is that wall located??

• 2. Tash  |  February 1st, 2010 at 6:54 pm

  Have you ever thought of making your own comic? If so, what would the main characters and story be?

• 3. James Patradoon  |  February 1st, 2010 at 7:23 pm

  Hey Mark – the wall was painted at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney last year, it took about three days and three nights. It was a favour for my friend Nick Garner who runs Das Super Paper, a free art street press in Sydney, it was the launch night of issue five I think. It was about 16m long, totally killed my back.

  Tash – I have loads of ideas for comics but I haven’t actually started any of them. One of the ongoing ideas is about a debt-collecting/hitmen duo called the Domino Bros and during the day they work at a family owned butchery called Sal’s Meats which is a front for assorted occult/sci fi criminal activity. I made a Sal’s Meats shirt for my Yours The Demon show, they will be available on my site soon. Every other story I’ve thought of is loosely based on the Power Rangers mythos, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

• 4. Chad  |  February 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 am

  Hey James,

  Mad artwork! Shame missed your Demon exhibit, any others coming up? You must have a cult fanbase already hey?

  See you got an Honours degree, do you think studies are necessary or just an evil mean to get yourself creds? With any natural talent, I always think you either got it or not…

  Peace

• 5. James Patradoon  |  February 3rd, 2010 at 12:48 pm

  Hey Chad

  I have two group shows coming up in February back to back actually – one called ‘State of the Art’ at ABSOLUT Stairwell gallery on the 11th of February run by Pedestrian TV, and a one night group show the 12th at The Club in Kings Cross called ‘Friends of the Federation’ run by the Design Federation.

  Art school was really good for me, it opened me up to a lot of stuff and the final year of Honours really crystallised my whole practice. It made me critical of where my work was actually coming from and how to understand the context of other artist’s work which was really important. There is a balance between the pink fluffy cloud mystery of not knowing where your work is coming from, and then learning things about yourself and your work so you can progress and move on as an artist and keep developing ideas.

  A lot of my friends didn’t do the art school thing and it just wasn’t for them, but they were also really disciplined. There is this guy Adam Paquette who is the craziest concept artist ever and he is all self taught – which is insane if you see how good his work is.

  Sometimes natural talent is enough to go on, but other times the talent needs to be nurtured and developed in an art school environment to find ways to channel it – depends on the person.

• 6. Steve  |  February 3rd, 2010 at 11:57 pm

  Hey,
  Great stuff! I really loved your earlier more colourful pieces, but this new pared back work is genius, can’t wait to see what comes next! I realise you graduated a year or two ago, but I’d really like to study fine arts and I was wondering if you would recommend cofa as a place to study? How did you find the teachers etc?
  cheers!

• 7. alexa  |  February 4th, 2010 at 12:04 am

  Hey James!
  your work is epic! what I really want to know is…. what is James Jean like in person? and how do you cope with deadlines and if you don’t mind maybe a little about your working routine?

• 8. James Patradoon  |  February 4th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

  Thanks for the kind words Steve! Yeah I kicked it off with a lot of colour – I don’t know what happened – I did all the new black and white stuff over a month this Summer – feeling kinda bleak.

  When it comes to what art school to choose it really depends on what you want to do, the Sydney art schools all have their different strengths and weaknesses they are almost caricatures – give me an email at jirat.patradoon[at]gmail.com to discuss more.

• 9. James Patradoon  |  February 4th, 2010 at 4:59 pm

  Hello Alexa, how did you know I met James Jean? I saw him speak at Semi-Permanent, he is very well spoken and articulate and doesn’t say ‘um’ or ‘like’, something I’m still trying to work on. Apparently he is drinking buddies with David Choe, and plays the trumpet and keyboard. He is majorly chillaxed and super nice.

  Deadlines can be pretty crazy. When I’m not working to deadlines I feel like I’m wasting my life, and when I have deadlines I feel like doing a True Blood marathon instead or going to the beach. In the end though commercial jobs and deadlines have pushed me in directions I doubt I would have ever gone on my own. I think it has to do with the fear of client expectations, the money, and trying to push my work with every job. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing art directors who collaborate with me and push the boundaries of my work.

  I have the worst working routine, when I was doing the Demon show I was waking up midday, having a three hour breakfast, and then staying at the studio just drawing from 3pm till 5am every day for a month straight – I worked through Christmas and New Years Day – I can’t have fun if I still had work lingering.

  I’ve recently had to start using a studio because it got to the point of when I stayed home I would be too tempted to do Project Runway marathons or 30 Rock marathons all the time.

• 10. Nathaniel  |  February 4th, 2010 at 8:58 pm

  Hello James, i would like to ask if you have a consistent alternative universe where all your characters reside. if so, what are the freudian inclinations judging by your visual Vernacular of spiked haired demons and leather jackets ???

• 11. James Patradoon  |  February 6th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

  Hello Nathaniel or should I say JIN!

  The characters and their locations are made up as I go, the only consistent backdrop for them is a harbour-side city called Knuckle Bay – a city I made once in Sim City that totally failed due its bad public transport system, and inefficient power plants.

  As for your second ridiculous question, I don’t know where to begin. Bring Pirates of Coney Island next time!

• 12. KK  |  February 9th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

  Hi James, really enjoy going through your work and laughing at all the comments here. Lots of substance, I love it! What’s the fashion related stuff you have done so far and whats the most crazed project you have had to date? Legend mate KK

• 13. James Patradoon  |  February 10th, 2010 at 4:00 pm

  Thanks KK! As far as fashion related stuff goes I’ve done some t shirt graphics for Mambo and Adidas, and I did a press kit for Diesel Eyewear. Right now I’m doing snowboards for Koast and Capita, and I might be working with Famous Stars and Straps this year.

  I’m also doing my own shirts but I’m going to play around with the fabric a bit – I want to make shirts that look like they’re remnants from the 80s so they need to be real faded and worn out.

  Craziest projects – I think I consistently go kinda nuts every time I have to make work for a solo show. I remember once a gallery let me know I had a show there a month before the show opened, so I had a month to make all these screenprints for it and I it was during summer too so the heat made all the screenprinting and rushing around pretty intense.

  Everything was going wrong with the Yours The Demon show this year as well, I had to get a studio, and then my computer totally died, and the files were making my rental computer crash etc. Crazy times.

• 14. Adam Paquette  |  February 11th, 2010 at 9:24 am

  Hey Jimmy Everyone here in Ubud gets really stoked whenever I pull out the Wacom and work digitally, going on about how its ‘the future’. I hate the idea!

  How do you think we can make sure traditional media always stay relevant and don’t get trodden over by digital replacements?

• 15. James Patradoon  |  February 17th, 2010 at 11:48 pm

  I don’t think traditional media will ever get truly taken over by digital replacements. I’m stoked by all the breakthroughs being made in digital to emulate working analogue style (brush sensitivity, rotating while drawing, pencil textures etc.) but a grounding in traditional media is crucial to get the most out of digital work and really understand what it is trying to emulate.

  To be honest I think nostalgia will probably play a huge part in curbing digital’s takeover of the arts in a similar way that amateur photographers are reacting against the clean and predictable nature of digital photography and hunting down old cameras and using film again. Look at how popular lomos have gotten, and people are sad about the death of polaroid.

  Digital is a shortcut, and if artists rely more and more on shortcuts rather than understanding the traditional paths to create resolved images then it’ll show through their work. I know I’ve been guilty of that on numerous occasions and have tried to keep some balance.

• 16. mecho team  |  February 18th, 2010 at 3:22 pm

  Interesting that you are discussing traditional vs digital replacements, just posted up this video post of Digital Graffiti at 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Village:

  http://www.mecho.com.au/lifestyle/creative-interior-spaces/digital-graffiti-at-2010-vancouver-winter-olympics-village/

  Love the real thing but this is cool too! What do you reckon?

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