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For illustrator Christoph Hitz the key to the success of his satirical visual commentaries is in the idea. "It's not so much the accuracy of the drawing," he says, explaining that "there are artists who can technically draw better than me. For me, it's the whole recipe that makes it successful: the color, the style, the concept behind it. I'm there pretty fast."
Since the early eighties the Swiss born artist's work has evolved from being rooted in comic strips to being more conceptualized and stylized. Blame it on New York. "I think New York is about quick, fast one liners, or funny, stunning, and perplexing images. I've moved away from elements like bubbles, and motion lines. As a result my work has become more intellectual. Because I had my roots in comic strips, I'm more sympathetic with the ant-hero than the hero" he says.
After visiting New York in the mid-80s, Hitz knew he had to leave Switzerland. "It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips. I spent three days walking the city and was hooked," he says. As a schoolboy, Hitz always looked forward to creating a drawing to accompany his history reports. Being dyslexic, he often struggled with the written part and excelled at drawing. Recalling one of his first inspirational memories, he says, "I drew a big, red, full page parrot when the rest of the class made tiny black birds. That red parrot was visible all the way across the room."
In his earlier days Hitz used gouache and masking film when working on assignments for RCA Records, The Village Voice, the Washington Post and 7Days. He has since switched to Photoshop for most assignments.
"My idea was to depict the U.S. on Mars," says Hitz, who plans to attend the unveiling of his streetcar. "I wanted to show how the U.S. exports its lifestyle, like delivering a pizza to the space station. It's never about how many pictures were taken in space, or avoiding collisions with meteors. It's about getting pizza. On my streetcar I've images of Harley motorcycles and a baseball game." Hitz spoke to altpick.com from his home in the Catskills, where he lives with his wife, Deborah, and son, Emmett.
I go back and forth, but it's hard. Recently I was commissioned to do an illustration about Beijing hosting the Olympics. I wanted to do a drawing of a big Panda bear wearing Olympic glasses. The paper turned it down because they didn't feel Beijing deserved to host the Olympics and wanted a communist drawing with the green suits instead. In the end I try to come up with a drawing I can live with. That's the backside of it. How has technology changed your process? I love gouache because it has a beautiful pigment. When you put it on a drum scanner - which for most magazines is set for photography and automatically sharpens everything - that brings out the brush strokes. Gouache is meant to look solid and flat. I was always disgusted by my reproductions after scanning and the brush strokes that could be seen with the naked eye. I discovered this could be avoided using Photoshop and I haven't stopped since.
Do you still sketch?
It depends on the situation, but basically it's the average Joe. Do you have a trademark? Bold colors, ideas, bold colored shapes. Have you reached your pinnacle? If you're an illustrator, I don't know if you can determine that yourself. Maybe you look back and say, that was it. It's more like a plain with a few peaks in it. But the plain is as nice as the peaks. - Contributed by Mary Beth Holland >> See more work from Christoph Hitz >> See other member spotlights on the member spotlight index >> Find out more on how to become an altpick.com member |
