New Visions Featured Artist: Tyler Boss
Last fall we hosted our first New Visions exhibit, which showcased a selection of work from our Illustrator-S members representing artists of diverse and unique talent under the age of 32 who have chosen to support our mission early in their careers.
This spring we are happy to announce a new program titled New Visions Featured Artist. This program will extend the New Visions exhibit experience to our blog, Instagram, twitter and Facebook. Each month, an Illustrator-S member will provide a personal look into their artwork, and what continues to influence and inspire them.
As MoCCA Arts Festival quickly approaches we are excited to present Tyler Boss as our very first New Visions Featured Artist. Tyler is an award winning illustrator and comic artist based out of Brooklyn. He created the badge art for this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival, and has worked for a number of clients including Vice, Converse, Black Mark Studios and many more. View his work on Tumblr, twitter and Instagram and make sure you stop by his table G239.
Illustration of the Mojave Phone Booth.
1. When and how did you decide to become an illustrator?
I always drew as a kid, and I was always reading comics, but around twelve or thirteen that sort of thing wasn’t cool anymore, or at least where I grew up, so I switched to skateboarding and playing in terrible punk bands, and trying way too hard in the way teenagers do. But around 15 or 16 I met this girl named Courtney Menard, and I really wanted her to think I was cool. She was into drawing and art, so I started taking all the art class our high school had to offer, one of which was a comic class oddly enough. It’s weird, because I can remember the exact moment when I decided I was just going to try and be the best cartoonist I could be. I was sitting in my comics class reading an issue of Wolverine and thought “Yeah I can do this.” And I’ve been trying ever since. Also oddly enough, the girl I was trying way too hard to impress became an amazing illustrator, and is now my life partner. Weird.
2. Who are the biggest inspirations for your career?
David Mazzucchelli is the figure that looms largest in respect to what I’d like to accomplish with my career. For anyone unfamiliar, David worked as an artist for both Marvel and DC comics doing some of the best (and my personal favorite) superhero genre comics. His work on Daredevil Born Again with Frank Miller is sublime, and Batman Year One is one of the few comics I consider to be unequivocally perfect. But what makes David way more fascinating to me is that he just up and left one of the only outlets in comics that offers a stable income so he could create more personal work. From his and Paul Karasik’s adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, to Rubber Blanket and of course Asterios Polyp, David shows a range that leaves me excited about the possibilities of comics. My work bounces around as far as style and interest all the time, and seeing someone like David who blurs this conceived line in the sand of which side of comics you need to stand on is validating in some way. You don’t need to be one thing as an artist.
A painting used for the final 2015 cover of The Stranger.
3. Name one non-illustration inspiration in your career.
Movies. I watch a lotttttt of movies. I’m obsessed with how stories are told visually, so if I’m not reading comics I’m watching movies or television. There is something to be learned from every visual storytelling medium and I love to sit and pick apart every tiny decision someone makes in the construction of their work. It’s infinitely fascinating. Why did they use this shot? Why did they set this thing up only to have it never pay off? Why does dead staging work so well in sitcoms? What are the aesthetics that make 80’s B-movies only ever released on VHS so appealing? Not a great party game, but a constant source of inspiration and a way to keep the brain fit.
4. What is the best advice you have been given as an artist?
It’s not advice that was given to me personally, but I once read this thing Dan Clowes said, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it was something along the lines of “Don’t stay up till 4 a.m. waiting for inspiration to strike. Sit down, put a pencil in your hand and do your job.” I think that’s the most helpful advice you can give any artist.
A page from my comic Natives.
5. What is your creative habit? What do you have to do to get into your creative zone?
I’m really routine oriented, I feel like you have to be if you’re going to make comics as your main creative outlet. I wake up everyday around 9/9:30, play with my cat, go get a coffee from the grocery store next to my loft and then walk the few blocks to my studio. Then I just attack whatever the problem is for the day, whether it’s a page of comics or an illustration. I really adhere to that Dan Clowes quote, that you need to do your job. There are good days and bad days with anything. Days where I think ‘how could I have the audacity to believe I could do this’, and days where my brain and hand are so on point that every minute is pure bliss. So as far as a creative zone, it’s more of a “do your job zone”.
6. What music and books inspire you to create?
Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of younger post punk bands like LVL UP, Frankie Cosmos, Girlpool, and Alex G. They’re all younger bands who you can still see play for ten bucks at tiny venues. That sort of stuff really excites me and gets my energy up. I haven’t been reading as many books but instead listening to a lot of audio books. Nothing is nicer than inking a drawing and listening to Roy Dotrice. I mostly listen to non-fiction crime stories. The last one I finish was The People Who Eat Darkness, which was pretty unsettling. Stuff like that.
A page from my comic Baby Teeth.
7. As it relates to illustration what advice have you never forgotten?
Besides the Dan Clowes quote, my dad always tells me “life’s a marathon, not a sprint,” and that really sticks with me. I don’t see myself ever being the young hot shot professional who has their vision fully formed at the ripe age of 25, but it’s hard not to feel the pressures to want to be that way. People love the young art star and who doesn’t want to be loved? But as someone who probably won’t really know what they’re doing until 40, that advice helps keep things in perspective.
8. Do you see illustration as a group of individuals or a community?
I think it’s a community. Everyone is very supportive and interested in seeing the medium move forward. Even across all the different outlets for illustration, you see a genuine support system, a real investment from everyone involved. It’s competitive to be sure but in a healthy way that pushes everyone to constantly do their best.
Poster for Converse Rubber Tracks for the bands Cloud Nothings & Amanda X.
9. What sort of things keep you involved in the world of illustration?
Everyone else doing it and being excited by what they’re doing. Seeing a new illustrator do something you could have never conceived of or seeing someone who has been around for a while still surprise you with their pictures, that keeps me very engaged with the world. Engaged in the sense that I want to try and contribute something to the conversation in my own work.
10. What is your dream project?
I’d love to be able to work on a comic with a publisher for as long as I needed to with no other financial worries, and have complete autonomous control over every aspect of it, like down to the paper stock and printing method. I’d also love to draw an issue of Daredevil or write a screenplay though so who knows hah. I’m kind of all over the place with my wants. Mainly it’s that I can find something educational or of value in almost every project I’ve ever done and that keeps me excited. Which I think is the dream right? To always be interested in what you do.
11. If you could time travel what year would you go to?
I’d go to 2017 and see if America is still around, or if it’s now called the United States of Trump. Besides possibly witnessing that horror I’d love to go back to the 1977 and see the original Star Wars in theater with everyone seeing it for the first time ever. Stupid, I’m aware, but I’m a nerd.
12. What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
Being able to do it. I can’t believe that my time is my own to do with what I want and I get to spend all that time drawing pictures. More insane than that though is that anybody cares and that my work counts as a commodity. That’s also extremely rewarding.
A page from my comic 4 Kids Walk into a Bank. Written by Matthew Rosenberg and published by Black Mask Studios.
13. What’s the most terrifying part of your job?
The lack of stability. I never know when another paycheck is coming and that can be scary sometimes. Especially during tax season. But that’s the cost of having total freedom to do what you will with your time.
14. Love the Internet or hate the Internet?
Indifferent. An amazing tool and equalizer, but also a lot of hate and negativity knocking around in your pocket at all times.
Check back for more posts from Tyler and follow our Instagram on March 30th when he takes it over for the day!
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