“My first Memory was pencil drawing an outline of a whale next to a miniscule diver,” remembers Dan Lish, “I was obsessed with this image for about a week, then moved onto Dinosaurs. I was about three or four.”

He has moved on since but not so very far. A direct descendant of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy Of Art, Dan Lish, 35, recently returned to the UK after four years working as a video game concept artist in New York. As graphic artist for Rockstar games he contributed to titles including ‘The Warriors’, ‘Motorcross Mania’, ‘Serious Sam’, ‘Conflict Desert Storm’ and ‘Celebrity Death Match’, and designed all the US characters for certain environments in Sony’s ‘B-Boy’. He has participated in joint shows with graffiti artists and fine artists in Harlem and Brooklyn, as well as a 2000 AD exhibition in London last year and an exhibition entitled ‘The Art of Breakin’: Showcasing Paintings About B-Boy/Hip Hop Culture’.

Lish was born in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, UK, to an American father and English mother who met while is he was based in Britain with the USAF. He studied graphic design at Great Yarmouth Art College in the late 80′s but he’s “an illustrator by nature so fonts and layouts got a tad boring after a while”. Then he studied at Portsmouth Art College supporting himself with “a run of dodgy jobs such as ‘back of the line’ in a chicken factory, and painting and decorating an old folk’s mental home.” He also studied oil painting at the Art Student League in New York.

The defining event in Dan’s life was moving to the States and getting married. He went to New York with one bag of clothes and a poster tube and “really roughed it for a year – it was hard-going and pretty traumatic”. He maintained a long distance relationship with his girlfriend for a year before they married on Staten Island
“We went through so much out there,” he says, “Experienced some crazy things, from witnessing the Two Towers falling – my Wife worked nine blocks away – to the blackout, to being around shoot-outs in Brooklyn.”

He also observed the most extreme reactions to his paintings when he contributed to the Porn Art exhibition at Greenpoint Brooklyn.
“They where just some pages out of my sketch books, blown up, photocopied and coloured, then mounted onto a six foot piece of MDF wood,” he explains, “It seemed the more people got drunk at the opening, the more they avoided looking at it. You’d think it’d be the other way around, right? My wife made me give the piece away to a friend in the end.”

Now back in England, Dan Lish is based in Brighton, freelancing as a concept designer and illustrator. He’s also involved with the Star Wars Lucas Films Exhibition next year where he’ll be painting and selling alongside original Star Wars creators and concept artists. Primarily, however, he’s working on a graphic novel with business partner Dan Willett and on a vinyl toy of the Jasper Stank character who graces Beatmag’s current cover. “He’s an eight year old pig farmer with teeth the size of your dad’s work-bench,” laughs Dan, “The toy will be about 10 centimetres high and has three variants. Other figures from the Jasper world will be available next year. There’s also a site, www.jasperstank.com for toys, music, animations and games.”

The Great Gray Spider Day

“Children’s books have always been a source of inspiration and a great form of creative escapism, so when I get asked to illustrate a writers idea, I jump at the chance. The image below is a character based on myself as a child – lots of ginger hair and a love of the outdoors. The writer wanted her illustrators to involve themselves as much as possible with the images, so the emotional involvement was quite strong. Ink and wash is my chosen medium for children’s books, sometimes with a touch of digital.”

Early B-BOY Concept Designs

“These where produced with Digitally for Freestyle Games and Sony Interactive for the ‘B-Boy’game for PS2 platform. Whilst in NYC I was still very much involved in the hip hop scene, especially through dance, graffiti art and local DJ battles. Through my experience and accessibility, I was a good man for the job. The characters had to represent there own unique style, with an eye for detail that had to be relevant even in their fashions and the characters’ history. It was a chance for me to bring out my hip hop nerd side and go bonkers. There’s so much underlying politics on the competitive side of hip hop, I had to be careful of my content, questioning myself on every character.”

Monster Hunter Cartigan

“This spread was to garner interest for the graphic novel project myself and my business/creative partner have been producing. He writes the story – it’s amazing, trust me! – and I’m the drawing monkey man. I wanted a very rich illustration style, multi-layered but with muted colours, giving a slightly worn look. Cartigan, the main character and namesake of the publication, will not actually be featured a great amount during the story. Instead the reader follows the tale of the monster hunter’s son and his hopeful attempts to become his father’s salvation.”

Filed under: Art, Gallery by Flexmaster Nylon
2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Gallery – Dan Lish”

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   March 28, 2010 at 7:59 pm

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