Dave McKean:
Illustrating the Imagination
“Dave McKean es un volca.”
So reads the opening line of a catalogue from one Dave McKean’s solo exhibitions in Barcelona. It’s an apt portrayal.
Probably best known for his groundbreaking illustrations of 76 covers for Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series of graphic novels, the English, bearded McKean has also applied his explosive talent to book design and illustration, esoteric comic book illustration, CD cover design, advertising photography, writing — even composing jazz.
Having just published a disturbing yet uproarious children’s-book-for-adults, “The Wolves in the Walls,” McKean is illustrating two new children’s books — the “Varjak Paw” series by S.F. Said and “Crazy Hair” by Neil Gaiman. He’s also directing and designing “MirrorMask,” a live-action feature film with digital animation for the Jim Henson Company.
Limited by Gravity
Regardless of the medium, McKean’s general artistic approach hasn’t changed much over the years. “The demands of the script, book or film,” he says, “usually dictate the best way of communicating the feelings and atmosphere of the story.
“The major things that have changed,” he adds, “are the tools and materials I’ve been able to use. When I started on ‘The Sandman,’ I was aiming toward a translucent collage, a layered look, an insubstantial feeling where you’ve just got an atmosphere.
“I tried to do that with things like double exposures and different printing techniques. To a degree, this approach is always pretty limited by the fact that the illustration has to be a physical object and, if I have to photograph it, limited by gravity.
“The Mac has been really wonderful for that. Before the computer, I managed to realize about 20 or 30% of what I was trying to imagine. Post computer, it went up to a good 60 to 70%.
“I’m still struggling to get there, but, with the way I can make computer images work with each other and composite together, I’m much closer to getting the images that I intend. It was a real pleasure when programs like Photoshop proved to be so transparent for me and so easy to work with. Now, nearly everything I do goes through the computer at some point.”
Horror Moment
McKean first used the Mac on a project the day it was delivered to him and set up “by this guy,” McKean recalls. “He turned the Mac on and left me at it, and that was a kind of horror moment. I had a CD cover to do that day — ‘The Piano’ for Michael Nyman — and I kind of figured out how I was going to use Photoshop to achieve this.
“And I made every mistake possible. I worked from RGB files that proved unprintable. I made images the wrong size. I saved them in the wrong formats. But I got all of my major mistakes out of the way on the first cover. I think I really got the gist of the computer working on those early CD covers.
“I’d taken a break from doing a lot of comic book work, and I’d done a couple of books — ‘Signal to Noise’ and ‘Violent Cases.’ I’d also done a couple of books that did very big numbers — a ‘Batman’ book and ‘Black Orchid’ with Neil Gaiman — but I didn’t feel at home in the mainstream superhero comic book market.”
“Before the computer, I managed to realize about 20 or 30 percent of what I was trying to imagine. Post computer, it went up to a good 60 to 70 percent.”
Superhero Collapse
“The problem with the ‘Supermans’ and ‘Batmans,’” McKean elaborates, “is that they really work best when they’re very, very simple and when they’re done by people who loved them as kids and want to recreate that naiveté. But I don’t have those feelings for them at all.
“I had a go at doing something different with ‘Batman,’ but as soon as you start trying to give these characters any kind of complexity or come at them from any other angle, their foundations are so weak that they all kind of collapse. It’s a really horrible calamity of form and content.”
