Jirat James Patradoon

JIRAT JAMES PARADOON (24) from Sydney, Australia lives and breathes on a superdiet
of cartoons, comic books, and sci-fi movies. Famous for making giant candy coloured
screenprints and posters of fictional characters or “Teenage vigilantes”. Patradoon always
dreamt of joining the X-men, becoming Ultraman, or Dracula, or a Lucha Libre pro wrestler.
These ambitions reflect themselves in his work and we want to know all about it!

Jirat James Patradoon was born way too late, but that’s good for all of us. He should have been born 20 years earlier, and done skateboards for the bones brigade and graphic novels that would be turned into summer block busters. Luckily, we get him in our generation to take things a step further.
Patradoons work reminds us of being fourteen and and jacked up on jolt cola sneaking into Rocket From the Crypt shows. If you’re to young to remember the late eighties/early nineties, this stuff is like looking at the best parts of that era, but with a fresh new twist.

How did you start your career?
Things really snowballed for me after my Honours year at artschool.
I majored in Printmaking and exhibited a series of large format screenprints depicting a masked teenage vigilante  people really enjoyed it and it was mentioned ona few blogs.
From that I started getting illustration work which was kind of weird for me at first because I saw myself more as an artist than an illustrator but itbegan picking up momentum and speed so I just went with it.
Wh at were your first projects/ideas?

Not a lot of people know this because I don’t show the work at all but my earliest works at artschool were self portraits as Dracula and Van Helsing. I would do these lino-cuts and etchings of me slaying myself in a coffin and things like that.
I thought it was pretty funny but not a lot of other people got it. I always I have the most fun when I’m doing something random like that.
Do you see life in greater detail than others?
I notice clothes and proportions a lot. I love drawing clothes, I really pay attention to things like how certain jeans stack at the bottom or the folds in leather jackets, people’s hairstyles etc.
I get really excited when I see people with the same body proportions as an Egon Schiele painting or a Scott J Campbell drawing.
I carry a sketchbook around a lot but it is mostly full of lists. On the way to work in the morning I always try and draw how different Railway officers wear their uniforms and adapt them to their personal silhouettes. I’m interested in those sorts of things.
Wh at are you working on now?
I’ve been given the opportunity to do my first ever short comic book story so I am working on that. It will be featured in Image Comics’ Popgun Anthology, which is kind of like a mixtape of experimental comics.
I’m really excited about it because I’ve never really thought of doing comics before; I just draw in a pasticheof that style.
I’m thinking of doing a black and white wordless story, I don’t know
what the story is yet I just know how I want it to look haha.
Wh at does “hardcore” mean to you?
Hardcore is going beyond your limits and losing all sense of self-preservation.
When I think of hardcore I think of that wrestling match where The Undertaker choke-slammed Mankind through the top of a cage and onto a bed of thumbtacks,and they still kept on fighting.
That was totally hardcore.
Can you tell us more about your FICTIONAL characters?
The characters I create are a pastiche of masculine archetypes, bikers, gangs, action- men, mythical gods, superheroes etc.
Masculinity is too often defined in black and white terms, so I explore the polarities of hyper-masculine and effeminent behaviour in search of the grey areas.
I’m interested in the campiness of costumes and stylised performative violence, like peacocks having a deathmatch.
Please describe your regular week for us?
I actually work at an art school full time.
My regular week is spending all day at work making sure the studios are running properly, showing students how to do things, fixing things, and then I come home and do art/illustration work at night.
Weekends are usually spent doing art/illustration work as well so you could say I have two full time jobs.
At one point I was working 20 hours a day for a while,things can get pretty crazy, for this reason I am slow at responding to emails and my friends think I avoid them.
Who do you work for?
I’m a freelance illustrator so I work for lots of people.
My favourite projects are the ones that really push my ability and vision and I come out the other end with new ideas and techniques. I really respect a client that understands my aesthetic and hires me on that basis;
I work really hard for them because they are trusting me to articulate their vision in my style, they hire me for me, which sounds simple enough but sometimes you get clients who see that you do comic style character illustration but then ask you to paint a landscape in oils.
Fortunately I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some amazing art directors who really know their shit so it has been a wonderful ride so far.
If you could pick anything, what would be your dream project?
I love illustrating clothes so I’d really like to do draw a Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh,or Dior Homme editorial. That would be the perfect marriage of my two loves, fashion and illustration.
I also love drawing duo bands, dream clients would be Justice or Crystal Castles or The Presets or Death From Above 1979 (but they broke up).
Where do you find inspiration?
I watch a lot of movies and tv series. I like the way lighting and framing can create a mood. I pay a lot of attention to dialogue,I’ve gotten really good at quoting Madmen.
I spend hours looking at film still forums on livejournal, and I also dig image feed websites like Yimmy’s Yayo.
Its all about being overstimulated with imagery and narratives – that is when I’m most inspired.
Who or what influenced your work?
When we were young, my friends and I would sneak around this battered up copy of the anime Ninja Scroll on VHS and I remember seeing the trailers for the other anime movies at the beginning and just thinking ‘What the fuckkk??’
Here were scenes of super graphic violence and sex but as cartoons?
We went from watching innocent stuff like Transformers and GI Joe to watching Wicked City and Guyver.
I loved the irony of seeing such adult oriented themes done in a child-oriented way.
I think that has always stuck with me. I like using different styles and mediums for functions that they weren’t really intended to be used for – in a subversive way.
The best day in your life, what happened or what could it be?
Gosh, best day in my life would probably be when they move an ancient English Castle on top of Shibuya 109 and tell me through some strange chain letter type coincidence that I have inherited the penthouse suite and I don’t have to pay any rent ever on the condition that I am room-mates with j-pop star Gackt – that would be a great day.
Any cool upcoming artists that we need to check out?
I don’t know how upcoming they are but
I’ve been enjoying the work of Scott Anderson and Michael Ciervo a lot. I’ve been digging painters recently.
Aquote that really sums you up?
In regards to historical writing, a lecturer of mine once said “A fish has no word for the sea.” – in other words, a fish can’t see the sea until it gets caught and pulled out of it.
I think he was paraphrasing someone else but I never found out who it was. You can never really know or completely understand where you are in life until you can see it in retrospect, so don’t overthink things, all you can do is your best.
What has been your favorite artwork until now?
I like a work I made called Shark Plague.I started drawing it about a year beforeI finished and screenprinted it.
It got too hard to draw and so I put it aside. Then as my draftsmanship improved I took it back out and finished the drawing in time for a solo show. It is quite different to my other work in its perspective and limited colour palette.
It sold really well and I used the image as a mural, painted on the wall of a Sydney nightclub.
Future goals?
For my personal work I want to move away from screenprints and get into costume design. I want to construct the garments and masks that my characters wear and exhibit them as sculptures.
It is still in its planning stages so it is quite far off but I can’t wait to get started on it, I’ve been talking about doing it for ages but I’ve always been too busy to make a start on it – which is kind of a good thing.
Famous last words?
I was watching Dig! The other night, it is a Dandy Warhols/Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary – I liked what Courtney Taylor Taylor says toward the end about the art life “When it is good it is fun, when it is bad it is funny.”
I think that’s a good outlook – people can get way too serious.
MORE INFO
http://www.jiratpatradoon.com