Drew Morrison

Drew Morrison lives in Brooklyn where he is recently single and looking for a roommate.

He also makes dark, humorous illustrations that may or may not make you sad and want to drink.




Do you support yourself now by illustrating, or do you have other ways of making money?

Yeah, I have a woodshop where I do freelance furniture making and other things. Fabrication jobs. People always need stuff built like display prototypes or even a crate to ship something. That really helps because I can’t live off of this right now. I get work in illustration, but it’s not enough.

What kind of furniture do you make? Do people contract you to make them furniture?

Because I’m just really getting into it, I’ll do it when someone wants something and I’ll try to design it. I’m really just learning now. But that was originally what I was going to go to school for, furniture design. So now I’m kind of getting back into it and teaching myself.

Do you have woodworking in your family?

Oh yeah. It’s in the blood for sure. My grandfather was a machinist and my dad was a cabinet maker and a woodworker.

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Where are you from?

I’m from a suburb outside the city of Buffalo, New York. It was pretty low-key, nothing too crazy. I just skateboarded and drew pictures with a big group of kids, the kind of stuff that a lot of people do in the suburbs. I actually grew up in what’s supposed to be the safest town in America: Amherst.

Can you vouch for that?

No. [Laughs] It’s pretty safe. You could leave your doors unlocked if you wanted to, but no one does.

When did you start drawing?

Really young. There are pictures of me drawing in diapers in front of the TV. That sort of thing. Forever.

What would you say your earliest influences were?

I had a huge Ninja Turtle phase. When I reflect on it, I see it a little bit of it in what I do now. Combining reptiles and people. That kind of thing. Also a lot of the staple stuff like Marvel comics and Spiderman.

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When you draw, is it something that evolves from doodling, or are doodling and illustrating two separate things? For instance, do you sit down sometimes and say to yourself, “Now I’m going to doodle,” and at other times say, “Now I’m going to make an illustration”?

Usually everything I do starts with some mindless little thing from my sketchbook that I’ll pick out and draw on a bigger piece of paper. Most of the time I’ll sit down to work on something and realize an hour or two later that I’ve just been drawing little guys all night.

What kind of publications do you usually do work for?

I’ve done stuff for the New York Press and couple of magazines, one for a financial magazine in Seattle. I’ve promoted so little that I have this dotted series of jobs, but I’ve kind of hit all different places. I did something for Alfred Hitchcock magazine which is a small, Reader’s Digest-style fiction booklet. Then I did a packaging project for a big record company. I’ve done things for all different levels of printing.

You're living in New York now?

Brooklyn. Greene Avenue, near where I went to school. In Fort Greene, kind of on the Bed-Stuy fringe. My girlfriend is leaving so I’m trying to find a roommate. Let everyone know. I’m a bachelor and I need a roommate. [Laughs] I like it though, It’s a nice neighborhood, the people are nice and a lot of them are actually interested in what I do.

Would you say that there’s an overall, unified aesthetic to what you do, or is it more random?

I think that I definitely have a few different hands, but I try to keep it consistent. There’s different things, based on materials or whatever I’m trying to convey, whether it be texture or color. If I just want to use color I’ll just use ink with a brush and then color it in Photoshop. But if I want to do sand or trees or something, I’ll just use a lot of ink and lines to show that. I always wonder if that’s something that matters, if I’m ever really going in one direction. If I see a really big body of work from someone I’ll think, “Oh they must’ve done that in this certain span of three years and it’s really good.”

I always wonder whether I should being doing things more like that. But I know what makes me happy is doing different stuff all the time so that’s what I’ll keep doing. The variable for me is the amount of realism that I use; it will either be up or down. Maybe I want it to be a slapstick cartoon, or maybe something like a photograph with a billion details. I’m shying away from stuff like that though, because I don’t want to be an old man with only ten drawings. I want to do volumes.

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Do you have any interest in pursuing comics further, by actually turning them into books or something?

I do. I’ve actually started one thing of a guy who goes camping and fishing. It’s such a daunting thing, though. I have so much admiration for cartoonists who put out books that are drawn the same way for hundreds of pages. That alone would be a problem for me, to keep the same hand throughout the project. I do have stories to tell that I haven’t gotten to yet. I would say to expect ten-second animation loops of little guys doing things with funny music like dancing or cutting vegetables. Something like that. Doing everyday things.

Whom are you’re really into these days?

I really like the comics of Sammy Harkham. He’s pretty well known. He publishes this one anthology Kramer’s Ergot. His comics are really good, but not a lot of dialogue. They sometimes just ramble. There’s a lot of action, but it’s ironic. I like Jim Woodring a lot too. He’s another cartoonist who’s pretty well known, but not very much so.

Any major projects that you’re working on right now, or pieces that you’re trying to develop?

There’s a circus illustration [first image in profile] that I’ve been working on for about seven months on and off, with huge breaks in between. I’m trying to get into doing some animation, basically little loops of some of my characters, set to music. I just want to make these guys dance. I’m looking for work too. I’m at a point right now where I can’t just sit and draw, I need to promote to get jobs so I can like… eat. Then I’ll sit down and draw.

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In a lot of your pieces there are these demonic, Bosch-inspired characters. Are you influenced by that kind of dark, pessimistic imagery?

Yeah. The little characters who are humans with bird or demonic little animal faces, a lot of that is just because I like animals, and [I like] drawing them. That’s a way for me to kind of draw but not have to draw, let’s say, a human nose because I don’t really enjoy that. I can do it, but it’s just not what makes me happy. I like work that’s usually pessimistic like you said, but funny. It’s needs to be sad and funny.

I do notice that there’s a definite cynicism to a lot of your stuff.

I don’t want to make people just drink and be sad. I want to make them laugh, or maybe think and reflect on themselves on whether they’re happy or not. Something like that. I try to have elements of real life like things that might happen to you, or may already have happened with humor while maybe pushing over the top a little. Like, if I have a protagonist who’s just a little blob with a beak or something. I hope that maybe people will look at it and say, “Hey, that reminds me of so and so,” or “me when I was this age.”

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One of your pieces is of a giant green Godlike character in a cloud who’s extinguishing a house with a garden hose. Then there are other pieces that feature the devil. Does the idea of God or religion play into your work at all?

Not cognitively. I definitely sometimes like to use different mythical ideas, like using a certain mythical character then maybe try to adapt it. Not anyone specifically. Like the guy in the cloud; he’s supposed to be some kind of rain god or something, but I’m trying to make it funny with the garden hose. I try to not just do people. I think it’s important to vary it.

It’s almost like you create a world that’s like our world, but the rules aren’t quite the same.

That’s funny. That one that you’re talking about is an assignment. It’s one of the few school assignments I have on my website. I also water-colored it, which is something that I don’t usually do. I usually computer color it.

I notice that a lot of your pieces are voyeuristic. They feature characters who are by themselves, and they way that they’re framed, it almost seems like it’s being viewed from a kind of omniscient perspective. Is that something you do on purpose?

Yeah. There’s the camping guy with the hot dog, and the other guy alone, fishing. The guy camping, that’s totally just me thinking about camping in my backyard when I was little, which is what you do in the suburbs when you’re too young to actually drive somewhere and go camping, you set up a tent in the backyard.

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When I develop a little scribble into a bigger thing, I’m thinking about how I can make it into the “epic movie shot.” That’s where that helicopter video camera shot comes from. It’s like a funny scene but framed in a way where it’s supposed to look “deep.” That contrast I think is funny.

Considering that piece with the Green God-type character, and another one of a fat, trucker guy with a freeway winding around him... there seems to be a theme of man’s impact in your illustrations.

Not so much anymore, but there was a period where I was obsessing over that sort of thing; the impact of our species and how the world handles it. Not so much anymore though, I kind of learned to accept it. That was back when I was really pessimistic. It’s still in there though.

Your illustrations often include objects with human characteristics and life, such as in the illustrations with the gears and the two-sided gramophone with a mouth, and then other pictures where living things like birds are mechanized. Is that kind of role reversal is a theme for you?

Yeah, but I’m only really using it when it applies, like when there’s no other option for me. Say I want to represent birds feeding their young as a metaphor for media propaganda... I figure, “Why not make them metal, too?” That kind of thing wouldn’t make sense if they were real birds. The gears with arms and legs, I guess that’s kind of a throwback to the Acme, and Warner Bros. cartoons. I don’t know, I think everybody likes little guys with arms and legs running around. The gears though, I realize that’s bad, because then they can’t work as gears because their arms and legs are in the way. I guess they could take their arms and legs off if they wanted to be an actually gear.

The strange, beaked, quasi-human creature, he’s in a lot of your pieces. Is there a story behind that guy?

That kind of evolved from doing figure drawings and drawing a lot of animals. I just kind of drew whatever I wanted, not to mention drawing those guys was a lot faster and a lot more fun that drawing human faces. Also, with the big pointed face, I like the challenge of trying to create a human expression in the eyes and the pupils. I want to show what he’s thinking. I want to reduce it to the animal type expression that people can relate to but not. People seem to get it, though. They tell me “it’s not me, but it is me.”

Considering that, do you ever think about evolution when you draw?

That’s funny you ask, because I just watched that movie Inherit the Wind last night which is about a teacher who teaches Darwin in the south and they put him and jail and prosecute him. I definitely think about what kinds of little things could have made this all different like “Oh, this chemical dropped in that puddle and made us all turn into humans.” I also try to make it so when you first look at it you see strange creatures like monkeys with fish faces, but then you realize that they’re doing the kinds of things that humans do. So they have kind of a delayed reaction.

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Some of your illustrations, I noticed, are sight gags, the most obvious being the “Sausage Party.”
Do you feel that kind of humor diffuses the pretentious of the art scene?

I like the one-liners, and the punch line, as long as you can make it good. If you can draw something that someone likes to look at, and there are different characters that look funny, they’re going to laugh at a joke they wouldn’t have found funny if someone had merely said it. There’s the one on my website where the compass is offering a joint to a ruler and ruler is saying “no thanks, I’m straight-edge.” That’s so stupid, but the little guys make it funny. I feel like a lot of older cartoonists used to do that more. It’s really simple and funny and it doesn’t have to be a one hundred and fifty page graphic novel that makes you cry.

A lot of your illustrations seem like snapshots that could’ve potentially been taken from a larger story. Do you ever formulate stories in your head around those pieces?

Yeah. Not developing them has a lot to do with not having enough time. I’m working towards that though with animation. I want to make little shorts that would maybe say more, or be a little more entertaining. There are sometimes pieces where everyone will do that, they’ll come up with their own story and assign identities to the characters that are not there. I drew this one piece of a guy in his underwear shaking a somebody’s hand and everyone asks me “Is that Jesus?” And I’m like “No! It’s a reptilian man in his underwear.” I think sometimes, in your head, you have certain figures that you’ve seen your whole life, or you’ve seen a ton of images of, and you draw them unknowingly in your own style and then people see the underlying thing that you might not. It’s a really weird thing.

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I feel like some of your pieces, not all of them, can’t really be placed within a specific time period. Do you try to create ambiguity around this, or is it something that just happens?

If anything there are times where I try to create a time period, where you’re definitely supposed to think it’s from an older time, or I’ll put a character in an older setting, but it’s never trying to purposely make a character timeless or anything.

Anything you’ve been published in recently where people may be able to find your stuff?

The most recent thing I did was a couple of pieces for Esquire magazine in Russia. They used me for their website and something for their print. So if you can find an issue of Russian Esquire magazine you can see a drawing of a big wooden cow, the Trojan cow.

How did you manage to hook up with Russian Esquire?

I had a piece, the mechanical birds drawing in the American Illustration annual, and I’m pretty sure that’s where they found me. Then I did a packaging project for this set of films that are going to be re-released from a long time ago. The U.S. company that’s going to do it didn’t end up using them, but a company in France is going to use them. It’s a re-release of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Fondo Elise, which is his first thing. I had never seen any of his stuff until I met this girl who’s the art director at the company that’s releasing them called me and said, “I want you to watch these films and work on this project.” It’s funny that they gave it to me because the guy is such a fucking weirdo. It’s my biggest gig so far. It’s kind of a bummer that the big U.S. release isn’t going to use it, but it’s cool because some people in France bought the rights and they’re going to release a foreign version of it. That should come out this month I think.

I know that as of right now it’s impossible to find those movies anywhere.

Do you know the story behind it? The old manager of The Beatles, Alan Klein, he saw El Topo and John Lennon convinced him to fund The Holy Mountain, which was so incredibly over the top. It was really expensive to make, that’s why he was able to do it. So that guy has had the rights for about 40 or 50 years other than Japanese versions or something. They’re really big over there, I’d never heard about them in the U.S.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were close to death and somehow managed to escape it?

Oh yeah. About a year and a half ago I was hit by a police car. It was really bad. My teeth were all knocked out, and I had injuries. I spent time in the hospital with a punctured lung. I guess it’s not that close to death.

That’s pretty fucking close, dude.

Yeah I was pretty banged up. I did self portraits of myself in the hospital all fucked up.

Did that happen in Brooklyn?

Yeah, on Myrtle Avenue.

Did the NYPD pay your hospital bills?

Yeah they had to. I sued them.

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Website

www.drewmorrison.com

Photos

Nick Chatfield-Taylor

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