Mark_Budgell
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Design can be as important as technology when it comes to personal computers. This is the second of a four part interview series with the artists who created exclusive wallpaper designs for HP. Their art was recently unveiled alongside a redesigned HP notebook portfolio that includes the HP Envy, Pavilion and Mini lines. Their stories are as intriguing as the incredible wallpaper designs they created. Download them – the wallpaper that is – free from Facebook.
Laura Barnard is an illustrator from the UK who specializes in quirkily drawn cityscapes and unusual views of cities. She started career as a fine artist, and later trained as a graphic designer. My favorite quote from the interview – “I'm drawn to buildings that are a bit ugly and nondescript. I might be one of the few people that would campaign against tearing down dreadful looking buildings from the 60’s.”
MB: It’s clear that cityscapes are your passion. What makes them so inspirational for you?
LB: That’s a tough question because I’m not entirely sure. I actually started off drawing and painting people and figures. But I come from a family of landscape painters, so maybe I’m continuing a family tradition with a bit of a twist – my landscape is the city. On its own, the countryside doesn’t do it for me, but throw in a pylon or a wind turbine and I'll suddenly want to draw it.
MB: Cityscapes as a genre haves a surprisingly rich history. Are there any artists from the past or present that inspire you?
LB: The first artist I remember inspiring me was a lad called Stephen Wiltshire. I think I first saw him on TV when I was seven, and at the time he was only about twelve. He’s autistic and has a photographic memory. He’ll visit a city like London and draw from memory everything he saw, and in perfect detail. It’s quite amazing. I think that's always stayed with me, and I looked him up recently and he's carried on doing amazing work.
Lucinda Rogers I'm utterly in awe of, she's fantastic. She does really expressive work but it’s still dead accurate. And I recently discovered a painter named William Congdon who made me think about a different way of painting. He drew with paint rather than painted with it, which is exciting for me because paintbrushes and I have a love/hate relationship.
MB: Since you’re from the UK, will we recognize any landmarks in your work?
LB: The buildings in the HP wallpaper designs are based on drawings and photographs taken in London and Glasgow, but you won’t see any recognizable landmarks in them. They're just a few buildings that caught my eye. I'm drawn to buildings that are a bit ugly and nondescript. I might be one of the few people that would campaign against tearing down dreadful looking buildings from the 60’s.
MB: You’re very active online with your blog, twitter (@laura_barnard) and Flickr channels and so on. Do you ever draw inspiration from your digital life? Maybe websites you visit? Or is it primarily for sharing and discussing your work?
LB: Because so much of my work is of buildings, it's more important to drag myself away from the digital life. The digital world is really useful and full of resources and networking opportunities though, and I'd struggle to work without it.
The thing I find most inspiring from the internet is the amount of detailed visual information that’s available. There's always someone who's taken hundreds of photos of chairs or windows or cogwheels or who collects every potato peeler they've ever seen or who's scanned in their Russian stamp collection. That's the bit I can really get lost in.
MB: How did you feel when HP approached you to develop a wallpaper design? Was it something you’d done before?
LB: I had done some work for a fantastic site called Poolga that specializes in iPhone wallpapers, but designing for a small screen is very different from this project. This was a step into the unknown and those kinds of jobs are always the best.
What really blew me away was how open HP was about it. We talked about ideas and the direction I might go in, but really, they trusted me to take it where I wanted to and that made it such a great project to work on.
MB: Did you conduct any research on the “state” of wallpaper art?
LB: I knew HP wanted something different from the generic, abstract designs that are out there. I think there is much more interest in real art for wallpaper for a couple of reasons – first, a lot of people are using digital devices more for leisure than just business. Also, operating systems on a whole are better programmed so people are less likely to launch applications off the desktop, making room for art. A lot of the existing wallpapers I saw looked very “computer” and I wanted to do something that looked more hand-drawn. I like that contrast between computer screen and handmade.
MB: You originally listed your three images below as examples of the direction you might take with the wallpaper design. Can you explain how they impacted that?
LB: The detailed one on the left was useful to look at because of the interesting way the buildings fit together. The one with colored buildings is similar, but closer so you see quite a lot more detail. I actually had that detailed one my desktop for a while, but found it was far too busy, so I wanted to find a good balance between the two and make use good use of empty space to give the art a bit of space to breathe. And the final one looks quite handmade and hand drawn and I wanted the wallpaper to have that feeling as well.
MB: What’s next for you?
LB: I have several exciting projects, including this one, about to launch and I can’t wait to see them in the real world. I'm also working on a longer term project for a client in Sweden that's a little bit of a new direction, but great fun to be working on. I've just revamped my shop with a whole lot of new prints, so I'm going to be promoting that a bit for the next little while, and there's the usual bits and pieces coming in. So lots to be getting on with! As for what's actually next, in this job it seems there's not really any way of knowing most of the time, which is one of the best things about it.
MB: Thanks for your time Laura!
If you liked this, check out the interview with artist Alex Eben Meyer, Amy Ruppel and Julie West.
