At Home With: Tom J Newell
Tom J Newell
RIA: Hello Tom! How are you right now?
TJN: Hello Rory. I’m pretty good, thanks. I hope this finds you well, too. It’s technically a Saturday morning right now as I’m sitting to answer these questions. Although the days have seemed to merge into one another recently, I’ve been trying to at least keep a sense of when the weekend is. This morning has been devoted to watching cartoons with my wife and baby son.
RIA: Can you share with everyone a bit about who you are and what you do:
TJN: My name is Tom J Newell and I’m an artist, illustrator, disc jockey and record collector, creating hand drawn artwork and playing records at my home studio in Sheffield, U.K.
RIA: show us your WFH area:
TJN: Here’s a photo by my friend Owen Richards from his visit to my studio last year. This is one side of the studio that I use for sketching and computer work. Over on the other side of the room is a big drawing table where I do final inking work.
RIA: Top snack
TJN: Banana.
RIA: WFH / Quarantine tips
TJN: I’m in a constant state of figuring this out for myself so I wouldn’t really say I’m in a position to give out tips, but I’ve always worked from a home studio so the quarantine measures haven’t been too much of a shift. It’s all about tricking myself into a different frame of mind for work for me, which sometimes works. Break up the day, do some stuff that needs to be done around the house and then leave the house for some fresh air and return to try and settle down to some work. Perhaps ease in to drawing stuff for clients by sketching things for fun. These sketches can often work their way into the paid work eventually and still maintain an element of fun.
TJN: How has the recent quarantine impacted the way you work and have you had to change your working behaviour much?
RIA: Apart from missing family and friends and popping out for a coffee or to the library or to record shops, the general way that I work is similar through all this. We have a six month old baby at home too, so the quarantine has been a sort of extended maternity leave for my wife and I, too.It’s a balancing act of looking after little Eddie, running up and down the studio here and there and attempting to maintain a minimum level of sanity throughout.
RIA: What is keeping you sane at the moment?
TJN: Just the struggle to maintain that balance is often enough to keep me on my toes. I have self-imposed projects that keep me drawing something everyday and I’ve been doing a lot of running on my designated daily outings. Podcasts and music soundtrack the runs and the studio time and keep my mind occupied.
RIA: Podcast recommendations?
TJN: Mike Giant Podcast, Heat Rocks and Dad Bod Rap Pod.
RIA: What can you see from your window?
TJN: As part of my Drawing-a-Day on calendar project, I’ve drawn the view out of my window especially for this answer as today’s page. I’ve also joined on tomorrow’s page to make a diptych with a quick take on Daggers For Teeth’s Roar logo of you, Rory. (Arggggg Thank you Tom! I look HANDSOME!)
RIA: Dream client
TJN: I worked with Madlib last year. He’s one of my favourite artists working today and a constant source of inspiration. He was a dream client and the dream came true, which was amazing. I’d just be happy to continue to work with more of my musical heroes and to produce my own artwork alongside client work.
RIA: Show us a WIP and tell us a bit about it.
TJN: I’m working on a series of signature beers with Northern Monk Brewery for their Patrons Project and this is the second release we’ll be doing together. The can artwork will stack together to create an ongoing totem pole of characters and each beer will have a distinct visual theme, accompanied by a complimentary playlist of music that has inspired the imagery of each piece.
RIA: advice for being creative right now?
TJN: As I mentioned, I’m sort of employing certain tactics to trick myself into the mind state that I have to draw every single day. I have an ongoing project this year where I’ve been drawing onto the torn out pages of my daily calendar. A friend from Taiwan sent me the calendar and it’s designed by ‘Five Metal Shop’ over there with a really nice aesthetic to each page, which I’ve been drawing anything I think of each day just to keep ideas flowing. Often I see elements of these drawings creep into my client work or bigger artworks so everything continues to flow and I can stay creatively driven with this need to keep up on these pages alone, day to day.
RIA: Tools of the trade
TJN: Black Posca pens onto smooth Bristol Board paper mainly. I use Posca pens on pretty much everything, from my recycled brown paper Pink Pig sketchbooks to bigger pieces for clients, which are often drawn at an A3 scale and then scanned in with minimal tweaks on photoshop, right up to painting on big pieces of wood or even full wall murals with the bigger Posca pens.
RIA: What are you doing for your mental health?
TJN: The running has been a great time to detach myself from the studio, but often ends up as a time when I can clear my head and be surprised by new ideas that pop up in that frame of mind.
A bunch of us just completed a fundraising challenge where we ran 100km over 10 days in under 10 hours in aid of Sheffield Hospitals Charity so this gave me added focus. The ‘Hope is Strong Hundred’ was initiated by piña bar here in Sheffield and they adopted a painting of mine as the inspiration for the title of the run so I joined them in the challenge and did a charity release of t-shirts featuring the design, too. So far the project has raised over £8000 to help support Sheffield hospitals through the current pandemic and it's been an honour to be involved with it all.
RIA: TV/Film recommendations?
TJN: The Detectorists TV series on iPlayer and the Ghibli films on Netflix.
RIA: Your favourite piece of work or Job:
TJN: We have a piece of mine hanging at home that I made for my solo exhibition ‘Endless Toil’ last year and I ended up giving it to my wife as a gift because she liked it so much. It’s called ‘Pass The Torch’ and I drew it as we prepared to become parents. It now hangs above us where we spend most of our time with Eddie in our front room. It depicts a child engulfing an adult in flames. The idea was that the traditional idea of passing a torch down is reversed and it's a child who ignites the passion and drive of their parents.
RIA: Who is giving you creative inspiration at the moment?
TJN: My family and friends and the community around me, striving to keep going through our current situation. Looking online, its heartwarming to see how the creative community as a whole is generally stepping up to provide support to the frontline wherever possible. I’m in awe of anyone working selflessly on the frontline too of course, and their devotion and drive should be inspirational to us all. If the creative industries can produce stuff to make people smile at this point, that’s something of more importance than is initially apparent. Art can often seem trivial at times like these, but it can often be something that breaks through and helps people more than we can comprehend.
RIA: Do you have anything you think our readers should know?
TJN: Donald Duck was initially banned in some countries because he didn’t wear trousers.
RIA: Let us know the best place people can view your work
TJN: Have a look online through my Instagram page and then you could order something from my online shop and it’ll arrive through your letterbox to enjoy in real life within a few days. Sending and receiving stuff through the post has been really important recently. I’ve had artwork sent to me that has brightened up my day and I hope that the artwork that I’ve been sending out has cheered other people up, too.
(You can also see Tom’s work in his Roar online portfolio HERE and purchase artwork from him in our Roar Store:
Thank you for taking the time to chat Tom, hopefully speak soon in our foray into Insta Lives!
Tom: Much love to everyone.Keep on keepin’ on.
