Robbie Cathro - Artist Spotlight
Robbie Cathro, our new favourite Bristol artist.
Now, we may be biased as we live here, but Bristol just seems to be teaming with great illustrative talent?! We fell in love with Robbie's work when we did an exhibition that he was also displaying work at, and we thought he'd be a great person to get in our artist spotlight! Robbie has a great way with characters and we were super excited to see his interpretation of our sad ghost. And he did not disappoint!
Robbie's work has a great feel to it, and we're totally crushing on his colour palettes. One of our favourite pieces is spread he did for ANORAK magazine. IT'S SO PRETTY.
So what's he made for The Sad Ghost Club?
We asked Robbie to make us a brand new postcard pack, including 4 totally unique designs and they're just beautiful. He even made a cute little back design to write your messages on. We love the message of each postcard and the artwork is just beautiful. Good job, Robbie.
This is just one of his four finished designs (this one is our favourite, it's so so nice!). You can find all of Robbie's postcards here
So on to the questions!
1) What's your favourite fictitious Ghost from popular media?
There’s that Simpsons’ Tree House of Horror where Homer dies from choking on a piece of broccoli, so he becomes a ghost… then as a ghost he chokes again on that same piece of broccoli, dies and then becomes his ghosts ghost. So, both of the Homer ghosts?
2) What's the best item in your pencil case?
That would probably be my Pentel brush pen, they make the nicest strokes and are just so nice to use. They’re really lovely for line work!
3) Paint? Pencil? or Tablet?
I usually use pencil/ink to do the main parts of the image and its textures, then I’ll use a tablet to alter/colour! I find it a lot easier to draw on paper than on a screen, everything just flows a lot more nicely.
4) What's your go-to motivational album?
At the moment any of St. Vincent’s albums, they’re just soothing and have a great energy to them. Her music suits the winter for me so I’m listening to her a lot. Grace Jones ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ is another go-to if I need to get things done quickly.
5) How would you describe your work? Are there any common themes?
I’d say my work usually involves lonely characters searching for something to make them feel a little more complete? These are usually finished in restricted colour palettes that try and suit the mood I’m going for.
6) What’s your proudest piece that you've worked on?
I think that would be the spread I produced for Anorak Magazine.. It was the story of a boy who dreamt that his heroes (these were Hayao Miyazaki, Nina Simone and Goku from DragonBall..)would take him away on a magical cloud to become stronger! I used colours that I love and included lots of references to my favourite things!
7) Do you have any/many artist rituals?
Overthinking my ideas for a very long time.
8) What motivates you?
I think when I see artists that I’m inspired by doing well, or when I see my friends making great work, it motivates me to get stuff done too! Or if I’ve just read a comic or watched an animation that I love.
10) What do you do, that you think no one else dose whilst working?
My research and reference hunting always ends up on some obscure Wikipedia page about something that isn’t even related to what I’m doing.. e.g. ‘I need to learn about this type of sea snake’ ends up as ‘Oooh so now I know why this pop group split up!’. In other words, I’m just good at procrastinating.
11)Who are you inspired by?
My biggest inspiration is definitely Hayao Miyazaki, what he creates is so beautiful and delicate, and he has such a great work ethic too. I really admire how he crafts his worlds and their characters, particularly in ‘Future Boy Conan’. I also love Sylvain Chomet and his films, Ben Gijsemans and his book ‘Hubert’, Marjane Satrapi with ’Persepolis’ and Rebecca Sugar for Steven Universe.
12)What's your favourite way to practice self care? (Especially after a busy week!)
Probably to just sit somewhere cosy, eat my favourite indian takeaway, have a cheap frozen chocolate gateau defrosting and binge watch a good series… I just binge-watched ‘Yuri on Ice!!!’, an overly-flamboyant figure skating anime, and I had the best time.
We hope you enjoy Robbie's limited edition postcards, we love his interpretation of the ghost and all the colours and themes within the pack! You can his pack here
