Iain Macarthur

Iain Macathur was born in Swindon, England and began drawing from a very early age. At the age of 8 he found a love for cartoon shows (particularly Ren and Stimpy) and comic books (the first of which he remembers reading being one from the ‘Batman’ series). This love of cartoons and comics made him inspired to doodle all the time, and compliments about his doodles from family inspired him further, and encouraged him to keep drawing.

When he enrolled in college, he became interested in the prospect of taking a course in illustration, and knew that this is what he wanted to do in life. Throughout college, his main artistic inspirations included the work of; Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville, James Jean, Gutsav Klimt and David Choong Lee. He did a lot of photorealistic portraiture, but, while in his last year at college, his teacher encouraged him to experiment with different media and styles. After much exploration, he looked into textile pattern and decoration and started to combine this into his portrait work using pen and pencil. He began by adding decorative elements to his portraits, for example a piece of jewellery, or a decorated area on one area of the face. He then furthered this to create entire images using this decorative style. His artwork became more abstract and ‘cartoony’, although still included some photorealistic elements.

In 2008 he graduated from Swindon College with a degree in HND Illustration and hopes to progress to a B.A. in Illustration sometime in the future. He has done a few exhibitions including the Swindon College exhibition for Illustration and Graphic Design students, D/AD New Blood Exhibition at Earl’s Court London, and a solo Internet exhibition on Phone Booth Gallery.

He now does commission work and has designed for companies including Nike, MTV, Iron Fist Clothing, Animal Clothing and The Telegraph. His commission work has a very ‘cartoon’ style, and is highly decorative and sometimes quite abstract. He doesn’t use any colour in his work unless he is specifically asked to by the person he is working for. He feels that commission work has affected his art style slightly, as he really enjoys creating photorealistic pieces, however the demand is for his more unrealistic pieces. Therefore he gets to draw less of what he actually wants to.

“When ever I draw photorealistic pieces I feel more comfortable and expressive doing this style as its kind of my hobby, unlike when i’m doing cartoon style pieces I only draw in that style for commissioned work from clients and companies. Though I do sometimes like to draw cartoon stuff in my own time, I really like to focus on more fine art pieces.”