|For the complete interview including photos and art work download a pdf copy of MSM on the website. |Copyright Main Street Magazine, October 2010 issue. ISSN:1920-4299, Printed and published in Canada. For your FREE copy of MSM go to www.mainstreetmagazine.net
Nick Rose is a traditional illustrator who is renowned for his of pictorial storytelling, and influence he acquired by studying the work and teachings of Howard Pyle, the father of American illustrations as taught to him by Master Daniel Horne.
Not only has he trained under a Master, he also trained under Todd Lockwood, one of the all time greats in the fantasy field. Though the years Mr. Rose has done 100’s of book and magazine covers as well as interior illustrations. He also has an impressive list of commercial clients, including Sea World, the Carolina Panthers, the Williamsburg VA civil war museum, and Quay Publishing in London England to name a very few.
Some of the more notable publishers he has worked for are Dragon Magazine, Evil Nerd Empire, Hero Games Inc, 100 Kingdom games, Whiskey Creek Press (The Torrid Romance division, yes, he even did erotic romance covers) and many, many more.
Main Street Magazine had the opportunity to interview “Nick”, and we are happy to have him in our first “ART IN ACTION” article! We know too that as you read his story, walk in his shoes and get to the man, the artist and the vision of “Nick Rose”- that you too will love him as much as we do!
“I was born with the name William “Nick” Johns”, Nick told MSM, “but after becoming a professional artist, I decided to go by a name I had used in my days of doing fandom art, Nick Rose. I always have had a love for roses, and I felt like my life was a lot like a rose. After a long time I bloomed into something beautiful, but still would draw blood if you were not careful. That’s one reason I named my blog “Every Rose has its Thorn” like the song by Poison. If you’re interested in reading it, you can find it at http://nickroseart.blogspot.com/
I talk about my life as an artist, the work I do, and share the lessons I was taught by 2 of the greatest artist in the world, Master Daniel Horne and Fantasy legend Todd Lockwood. Like myself, I realize that there are a lot of talented artist out there that never got the chance to go to an expensive art school and learn the things that “famous artist” learn, but mostly don’t want to share. I understand why a good percentage of artist don’t want to share the knowledge, (They don’t want any more competition than they already have) but in my eyes, I feel that the knowledge should be shared with anyone who seeks it”. Daniel reached out and offered to help me after we had known each other for several years. He is truly one of the all time greats, and a wonderful man. His paintings, sculptures and Monster masks are amazing, and he does do some on line classes as well. The lessons he taught me where handed down by the very first American Master, Howard Pyle. So there is a lot of pride and history there. One day I hope to do a book or a long article on the linage of how the knowledge was passed from one student to the next. I know the Master that trained Daniel is named Ken Lagger.
Daniel introduced me to Todd Lockwood to learn the basic rules of drawing and painting. Todd is an awesome man and artist, but he explained to me he didn’t have time to blow smoke up my butt, and if I wanted to learn, he didn’t have time to waste so I did everything he told me to do. It was like going to boot camp, I love Todd to death, but he didn’t cut me any slack. At one point he told me I had no business painting, because I didn’t even understand how to draw. I’m not ashamed to admit it, he had me in tears. Up to that point I had been working in small press and had at least 80 illustrations under my belt, 20 of those being covers, and at the time I could not understand why he would say such things to me, but now 4 years later, I understand why, and in his shoe’s would have done the same thing. One thing is for sure, without the help of these two wonderful men, my career would have been very different.
A self taught artist does not know those basic’s, you can read about them, but until someone actually takes the time to go over them with you with examples, questions and answers you really don’t “get it”, or at least I didn’t and most of my friends that I came up through the ranks with didn’t either. It’s like when I was a kid and I wanted to learn Kung Fu, and I bought some book full of pictures on how to do it. I studied it and I thought I knew what I was doing, until I got out of the Army and studied Martial Arts for several years. The real thing, and I what I thought I had learned from the book where two very different things. So this is why outside of doing my own art and projects that passing this knowledge on is something that is very close to the chest with me. I want to equal the playing field, and give everyone the same chance I was given. If Daniel and Todd hadn’t helped me, I would be someone that only a few people have heard of. I am also putting all this information into several books and DVD’ that should be available around 2014, and we are going to sell them very cheap compared to the 100 grand you would spend at an art school. I’m thinking just enough to cover the cost, plus a few dollars for the work put into it, and of course the money we donate to children’s charities. That is something very important to Madison and I.
MSM: Your artwork is considered by most as being on the dark side. How do you describe it?
What some see as dark and scary, I see as beautiful, mysterious and consider to be part of who I am. I often tell the young folks that I was “Goth” before people had a name for it. I am not a person of evil, a devil worshiper or any such thing. I just see the world in a dark light, and I consider that a gift. You can’t have the light without the darkness. Most the images I paint are a reflection of how I see some of the real life monsters that have always found there way to me ever since I was a child, or the ones I see on the news, and pass by on the street. The painting of the ghost girl (Spooky) to me is a sad painting. A poor little girl’s spirit left behind for whatever reason, just wanting someone to spend time with, but people run in terror from her because she is different and misunderstood. Like all things the majority of the human race doesn’t understand, they either kill, or experiment on. I have dreamed about her on several occasions and often wonder if she is real.
Over half of the work I do comes from my dreams, and a good bit comes from writers who I am hired to illustrate a cover for, but things have changed now. If I do work with a publisher or writer, it really has to be something that gets me excited and I feel like was made for me. I have reached the point to where I can pick and choose the work I do, and the really dark work is yet to come. One of the projects I am publishing myself is going to be called “The Book of Rose” It is a story told, with countless drawings and paintings by me, and it will be very dark. The faint of heart will have nightmares from it. But that is all I can say for now. Perhaps when I get it completed and published, I will tell more then, but honestly, I have a few people out there that like to steal my ideal’s, and this one no one is going to have a clue about until it is out and everything is trademarked and copyrighted. I am creating a role playing game based on it as well and there will be many volumes of “The Book of Rose” to come. This is one of those projects that will keep on as long as I am alive, perhaps even longer.
To me the darkness is like a blanket. In it, I feel protected and free from harm. When I am hurt, it is where I go to heal. I remember when I was a young teenager; my stepfather would get drunk and beat either my mom or me. I still have the scars under my neck from where he threw a glass at me and it shattered in my neck. My mom wouldn’t take me to the hospital, because she was afraid of what he would do. Instead, she picked most all the glass out of my neck with a pair of tweezers. I was lucky that it didn’t hit a main vein, after that I ran into the woods to a place only I knew about and hide in the darkness. The moon was out, and I could feel something around me giving me comfort as I shook with terror from what the monster had done to me. I didn’t come out of the woods the next day until he had left for work. That was the first time I can remember not being afraid of the dark, and felt safe in it. That is why my tag line is “May the Darkness Comfort You”
How did you come up with the name "Wicked Kitty Studio?"
Well, the truth is, it just kind of happened. I’ve always loved cats, and anything to do with them, including cartoons. Shortly after I moved in with Madison, she got a cat for her daughter and named it Misty. We had no ideal how old Misty was, because the family we got her from had found her a few years earlier in a church parking lot. At that point she was already full grown. But the couple who had found her told us that she didn’t “Play” well with other cats and hada lot of “wild” left in her. They finally had to get rid of her, since they had several cats and Misty didn’t want to share the food with the other cats.
She was declawed, so she could not scratch us, but she had one mean bite. I had also noticed that she seem very sensitive in the back half of her body, so I am guessing that she was hurt at some point and was never given the medical attention she needed.
Misty took up to me like I was her long lost owner, but she would play rough with Madison and the kids, so as a joke I started calling her “Wicked Kitty” and one night when everyone else was in bed, I got a wild hair and did a sketch of a cartoon like cat with an eye-patch, scars and so on. A few weeks later I did a quick painting based on the sketch, and I added the words Wicked Kitty Studio, and the Studio was born. It was about this time that Madison started forking out a ton of money for some very expensive equipment for me to use, and as the year went by, she had invested a lot into my career and gave me the chance I never had before. So Wicked Kitty Studio became a publishing company as well. Once we knew that we where going to be married and spend our lives together, I made her the owner of the company, so everything we build will be protected. By the time people are reading this, it will be Wicked Kitty Enterprises LLC.
One last thing, please check out my website at http://www.wickedkittystudio.com we do have prints for sale at very reasonable prices, and please check out the link page as well. You can visit the websites of the models I use, my artist friends, and other great things.Many blessings and Much Love. “May the Darkness comfort you”
~Nick Rose~
