War reporting in Croatia is a far cry from the work that
John Reynolds does today - making screenprints of Dennis the Menace.
ANDREA WATSON hears how an inspired birthday present led to a
remarkable change in career
When did you swap professions?
I came into printing in my late thirties, as a kind of second career.
Did your family or upbringing play a part in it?
I would never have become a printer if it hadn't been for my wife Kathryn.
For my 40th birthday she organised an exhibition of my photographs at a
gallery in New York. This encouraged me to delve into screenprinting as a
way of enlarging the images.
What do you enjoy most about printmaking? The moment you've
successfully printed the last colour on a print is delicious. The whole
thing can take most of a day to prepare, so you're anxious not to spoil it.
If it's all come out right, there's a great mixture of relief and delight. It
is also hugely satisfying to work for yourself and to be in control of the
process. There's also a physical aspect to screenprinting which I enjoy.
Is it easy to sell your work? The whole process of building up a profile
and developing a sales network is hard work. It has taken three years
to set up my business making prints of old comic characters.
Are you telling me you make money from comics? That's about the
size of it. I didn't plan to make a living like this. Originally, I made
prints from my photographs, then I started playing around with old comics,
working from ancient copies of the Beano and Victor recovered from the attic.
These prints worked very well and now I have a licence from the publisher DC
Thomson to reproduce some of its characters, including the Beano's Dennis
the Menace, Gnasher and Billy Whizz and the Victor's Alf Tupper. I sell
these from my website www.thecomicartwebsite.com
What qualifications do you have? Although I didn't receive any art college
qualifications, I learnt the techniques there. A professional tutor's knowledge
is invaluable and there's no substitute for experience in learning how to print.
Everything gets easier if only because you learn to avoid mistakes or how to
put things right when they start going wrong. Networking helps a lot. You
need friends and contacts to alert you to possibilities and opportunities.
Hopefully your mates will help to keep you going in the beginning.
What pay and perks are there? I've been printing for four years, running
my company Comic Art for nearly two years, and have just started to break
even. So far, you could say I've found that the pay isn't very good.
However, printing is extremely satisfying and working for myself is a joy
after two decades of working for other people.
Briefly, what do you do on a day-to-day basis? My time is pretty evenly
split between printing and marketing. If I have studio time booked at the
London Print Studio, then I'll first choose an image from a comic, and then
make stencils for each colour. Once in the studio, the last ink to be applied
is the black, which brings the whole image together and that's the magical
moment. If I'm not in the studio, I'll stay at home to try to do all the
administration and marketing. Once a week I'll take prints to my framer Bill
Jones for him to finish off at his workshop in Clapham.
What is your most remarkable achievement to date? My prints of
Dennis the Menace are the first of their kind. Nobody has ever used him
as a subject of art before, which is kind of strange bearing in mind how
much of an icon he is in Britain.
What is the worst job you have ever done? In my late teens I did a
holiday job as a clerk and had to spend all my time filing. But that was
the year Bob Willis and Ian Botham beat the Australians in cricket's
Ashes series, and their heroics cheered me up.
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Comic creation Dennis the Menace has made it big in the art world
as the star of his own exhibition. The Beano favourite has been
given the Andy Warhol treatment by artist John Reynolds. Reynolds
has created a series of giant screenprints featuring the schoolboy
tearaway in his famous red and black stripey jumper.
The artworks are on display at the London Print Studio in west London.
Reynolds has secured the first licence to reproduce original Dennis the
Menace images taken from the Beano. They include the first Dennis the
Menace strip in 1951 - in which Dennis wears a shirt and tie instead
of his jumper.
''Dennis is a gift to the printmaker - the horizontal red and black bars of
his jumper, the exploding hair, the simple outlines and the speech bubbles
all make for dramatic pictures,'' Reynolds said. ''Of course, Dennis is a
national icon, so what he says in the speech bubbles take on a kind of
symbolic power.''
Studio director John Phillips said: ''Dennis the Menace is Britain's unofficial
national mascot. It's only fitting that he takes centre stage in an art gallery.''
Dennis fans include Prime Minister Tony Blair and Princes William and Harry.
The exhibition ends on July 2.
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http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news/tm_objectid=15571154%26method=full%26 siteid=89488-name_page.html
Den menaces the art world
DENNIS the Menace has made it big in the art world - as the star of his own
exhibition. The Beano favourite has been given the Andy Warhol treatment
by artist John Reynolds. John has created a series of giant screenprints,
which feature the schoolboy tearaway in his famous red and black stripey jumper.
John has secured the first licence to reproduce original Dennis the Menace images
taken from the Beano. They include the first cartoon strip in 1951, in which Dennis
wears a shirt and tie instead of his jumper. John said: 'Dennis is a gift to the
printmaker - the horizontal red and black bars of his jumper, the exploding hair,
the simple outlines and the speech bubbles all make for dramatic pictures.'
The artworks are on display at the London Print Studio in west London until
July 2. Studio director John Phillips said: 'Dennis the Menace is Britain's
unofficial national mascot. It's only fitting that he takes centre stage in
an art gallery
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