Domien Delforge is a 2.0 superhero: work in a bank during the day, draw kinky illustrations at night. We are amazed by his Instagram where he exposes piece of the human body with some quite humour. Through this interview, Domien explains how he got into illustration and found the right balance between his work and love for illustration. Illustrations became important in a lot of people life, learning from different stories inspire us every day to pursue our passion.
Can you tell us a little about yourself, what’s your background and what originally made you want to become an illustrator? I started making illustrations rather recently. At a young age I started to like pop art paintings, due to a Roy Lichtenstein silkscreen my parents had in their living room. Unfortunately I did not have a graphic or art background, because I was also interested in the event business and focused on that for a while. Years later, when I was about 28 or 29 years old, I saw my wife making lots of illustrations on her computer. As she is an architect during the day, we had an IMac and Wacom tablet and I started playing with this when she wasn’t using it. When I was confident enough I opened an Instagram profile and that is how it all started.
What inspired you to create this serie of illustrations? Why did you choose to represent the human body in a humorous way? As I only started recently, I still have a fulltime job as a banker during the day. Working in a bank means working with very strict laws and rules and almost no room for your own interpretation. To compensate this, in my illustrations everything that comes to mind is possible. I draw everything exactly how I think it should be, never mind the perspective, depth, curves… Also I feel humour is very important in creating art as the world is already a very sad and serious enough place. I really feel anyone should draw exactly what they want or feel is right.
How do you come up with the idea for each illustrations? Do you have any drawing process? Most ideas come at night, just before I go to bed. Often I just get an image in my head of something I want to draw. Then I send an email to myself so I remember it the next day. Next day I usually start by making some sort of collage of different pictures, colours and shapes. When I have an image I rather like, I start drawing with this image on a seperate screen. I always think about the way something will look when I print it. As I use Riso and Silkscreen the most, all images are made in layers so they can easily be split and printed. The process always ends with showing my wife what I created :).
Do you think illustrations are back and have a more significant place in today’s art scene? I think Illustration is a valid artform. The idea that only painting or sculpting are real art forms is just crazy. Just because I prefer a wacom and pen to a paintbrush, doesn’t make it more or less art. I prefer the texture of printed art and the vibrant colours of silkscreen prints. Next to the illustration I also think the printing process itself is a real artform as it is hugely important for the end result of your work.
Do you have any dream collaboration would you like to take on? The list of influences for me is a very long one and most of them are famous Pop artists. If I had to choose one it would be John Wesley. A huge influence on shapes and use of colour and genius printmaker. His silkscreen print «View getting out of the subway in St Tropez» is one of my all time favourite prints. It combines simplicity, humour, shape and colour in a brilliant way. Working with him would, he can teach me a thing or two.
Any quote you live by? There is a Irvine Welsh quote I like a lot: By definition, you have to live until you die.Better to make life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shit, which I suspect it will be.
A quick reminder to everyone that you should live your life to the fullest and better phrased then «Carpe Diem», which, let’s face it, is a lame quote.
Check out right now @studio_stoutpoep, there’s much more to see..
