Brief 2: Contact Report
Andrzej Deredos Andrzej Deredos is a freelance illustrator based in Poland. He works strictly with analogue mediums, mainly etching and acrylics, without any involvement of digital. His practice is a mixture of independent illustration projects he exhibits and sells in galleries and online, and illustrations for international clients. I’ve chosen to contact him, as I find his works beautiful and wanted to find out more about their creation process. The main reason though is that his pieces are very traditional and fully analogue, something that I’m leaning forward in my own practice, however it doesn’t really fit with current illustration trends and what most illustrations jobs/commissions seem to look for. Which is why I wanted to find out more about finding clients and a place in the illustration world, with this kind of illustration.
When did you decide to pursue a career as an illustrator ? In junior school, I’ve been drawing since I can remember. As a child I had a lot of illustrated books and I began copying their illustrations using tracing paper. After that I’ve taken many short art curses throughout high school and constantly practiced drawing, at that time I also got into photography and was thinking about doing a course in that at collage, but finally decided against it. I did a broad arts course at collage and finally took a degree in illustration and graphics at university. What are the inspirations behind your work ? I’m mostly inspired by nature, little things I find in my surroundings that catch my interest and my own head, that is the ideas it comes up with. I tend to have a lot of surreal, fantasy ideas which I like to combine with what I observe in nature. Illustration from about 18th to 19th century, the amount of detail and print processes that were popular back then, is something I gain a lot of inspiration from . What mediums/techniques/processes do you use to create your illustrations ? Mostly analogue- pencil, acrylic, etching, paper. I spend a lot of time in the print room, I began with mono printing, but now I practice mostly etching. I never use any digital processes so I need to make sure my work’s top notch right away.
What I admire in your work is the high skill of craftmanship and the traditionality of it, it’s not really what you tend to find in the current illustration scene. How do you find work and what contexts does it appear in ? It’s very hard to find work, because you have to do something that someone else likes but you do it without an assurance that will like it, which can be very stressful. The etching pieces are sold in galleries and online, it’s a lot more up to me to manage it. I also do paintings of vehicles for companies, these commissions have some strict requirements. There’s a specific colour palette, measurements, what needs to appear in the composition. I decide on organizing the composition so that everything looks good. The vehicle pieces go on boxes for model kits for these vehicles. How do you put you work in galleries for sale and how often? First I visit the gallery and offer them my illustrations, if they are interested we start a collaboration. There’s no contract, for time or amount of work, but if a certain piece sells well, I try to deliver more copies. These etchings take long to make though, especially when I’m working on my vehicle paintings at the same time. Mostly I don’t have time to visit as many galleries I’d like or make plenty of etching prints.
How’s working with international companies/clients ? It’s good, but sometimes it’s quite hard to negotiate prices for freelancers vs people who work in the actual company. There’s no guaranty for the stability of a contract. Generally being a freelancer working for a company is worse than being employed by them directly. I don’t get any bonuses and work’s never guaranteed. On the other hand though, you do get a lot more freedom as a freelancer to organize your time as you wish. I work Germany mainly, they have a bigger demand for my kind of work. From your experience, how difficult is it to find jobs for illustrators who work in more traditional ways ? People tend to work a lot with photoshop those days, also it tends to take less time to create illustration this way, which often makes it cheaper. It’s more relevant and popular, in game design, editorial, on social for example. So it is more difficult to find jobs as it takes longer to make the illustrations, they might not be as relevant and more expensive. Your work’s on the internet and you work with international clients, how do you protect your work against copy right infringement ? I don’t. Most of my work on the internet was made for official companies and any photos on the web were taken off of their websites, so if someone steals my work, these companies would be the first to deal with it. I don’t put any of my work online before I sell it to a company, so no one can copyright it before that. Once I sell the rights to a company, I no longer really have to worry about copyright infringement. The photos of my work on internet that I put in galleries, aren’t really worth anything, because they’re etching prints, only the physical print is worth something.
To sum up, what’s some important advice you can give to a young illustrator ? Find a sector in illustration where you can really enjoy yourself and use all of your skills. Always practice, be unique and find a particular style and way of working. If you’re too similar to others you’ll find it hard to find any jobs , but if you’re different you’ll easily find clients. They basically need to see you to give you the job, they won’t be able to do that if you blend in with everyone else.