Discovering the connection between community and art with George Yarnton

George Yarnton is an artist and illustrator from Ipswich, who has designed for magazines such as Enemy and Vice, as well as for the music industry and skateboard brand.

In this episode,  George talks about how he develops his unique illustration style, how he maintains a career as a freelancer, and what other design interests he has which help him with his career.

Instagram: @yarnd0g

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Transcript

Matt: Hello, and welcome back to the third series of the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Mosley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Each episode, I speak to artists and creative industry leaders about three main themes, teaching, inspiring, and creating. We talk about their experience of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them, and we explore how they foster creativity in their work with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts. Today, my guest is George Yarnton. George is an artist and illustrator from Ipswich, who has designed for magazines such as Enemy and Vice, as well as for the music industry and skateboard brand.

Matt: I'm going to be speaking to George about how he develops his unique illustration style, how he maintains a career as a freelancer, and we will hear what other design interests he has which help him with his career. There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.

Matt: Hello George. How are you doing? 

George: Good. 

Matt: Thank you very much for joining us today. To start with, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about where illustration started. What were your influences?

George: I think I've been drawing since day one. I honestly can't remember how long ago I must have started drawing.

George: And I think that's [00:01:30] probably the case for a lot of artists who keep doing it into their adult life, is you just do it from whenever you remember. But I think, distinctively, drawings in school, and kids asking me to either draw scenes from The Matrix, during maths class, which I did across like A4 sheets of paper, and just non stop battle scenes of, you know, Neo fighting agents in the Matrix, and then Simpsons [00:02:00] drawings. And selling the Simpsons drawings to buy cans of Coke.

Matt:  So, like, popular culture, though, is kind of…

George: Yeah, that was the big, like, kicker.

Matt: And working on commission straight away.

George: Straight off the bat for sweets and cans of drink in high school, yeah.

Matt:  You're a kid so the awareness maybe isn't there of kind of what exactly is going on, but to already be producing work and selling work at such a young age must have had some sort of influence on…

George: Yeah, I think, [00:02:30] at that point If I remember, I never really knew in terms of a career, like, what you could do in art, I just, I'd heard of a graphic designer at the age of like 14, so I thought, well there we go, I suppose that's my job. I can't do anything else.

Matt: And I guess like the confidence builder of people actually saying, you know, I want to own that, and when you were a kid, a quid is quite a lot of money.

George: It is, yeah. You can get quite a lot of sweets for a pound back then. It was nice to know that it was of a quality, a standard of [00:03:00] quality, that the other kids were like, I want to have that to put on my wall or say that I did it.

Matt: And was it helpful to navigate high school and other things like that by having an identity as, you know, George is the creative one.

George: I think so. I think I remember the typical bully kids would lay off me because I could draw something accurately. You know, it was like, wow, look what he's doing. I won't…

Matt: Got a skill. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: That the stuff that you are into being [00:03:30] the source material for great artwork, because that's kind of carried you through a little in your… in your creative life.

George: I think for… I think once I started to work out that there was a bit of a future in being able to draw things. You know, my parents say go to college, and I'm like, okay, I'll go to college, go to college, do what they say at college and you know, just go through it.

George: But when you get there, and this is coming from someone who's in a traditional art [00:04:00] background. Dad's a stonemason, so my childhood was looking at cathedrals, which was boring. Looking at churches, which was boring. And, quote, unquote, proper art, like Renaissance stuff, with houses filled with books about Renaissance art and sculpture.

George:  I'd just look at the pictures and draw from there, look at Leonardo da Vinci drawings, draw from that. And then when you get to college, you're told to look at Jackson Pollock. You're like, sorry, what?. What is this? Like, what am I, I don't know what [00:04:30] I'm looking at. You're on this defence of I can only draw what I like and that is either old fashioned stuff because my dad has all these books or things that I like, like films and pop culture stuff.

George: So you just spend years and years drawing from that. I had a great time at college just being able to draw freely and given the, like, the foundations to just make what you want really and be supported to do it. 

Matt: So what sort of work were you making then? 

George: I was working from popular [00:05:00] culture references that I was into. So, looking at movies, and I love movie posters. I distinctly remember looking at things like Evil Dead and Donnie Darko. I think I just must have been introduced to those films and thought, these are wicked, the effects. 

Matt: Yeah, aesthetically. 

George: Yeah, yeah, I think that, and it was like just drawing from that. Then I think a few of the tutors showed me Stanley Kubrick and some old westerns and trying to look at it from a [00:05:30] cinematography sort of viewpoint, I guess to try and get some more context out of what I was doing.

George: And then I got really into that and looking at the drawings from like a compositional point of view rather than just, I'm drawing it for the sake of drawing it. But yeah, not until I finished uni did I start to make connections between what I was really into and then how I could make art out of it.

Matt: So I wanted to kind of talk to you a little bit about stylistically how your work has [00:06:00] changed and evolved. So you mentioned at college you were working on illustrations from popular culture from movies. Can you tell us a little bit more about the work, you know, kind of what you were making, how you were making it?

George: I was just encouraged to, like, I was just given paper and materials and they just said draw. But I think I was just trying to find different ways of drawing that suited how I'd like to work. So, whether it was someone giving me, a teacher giving me a massive fabric brush to [00:06:30] paint with, or a tiny little pen, I think I was just trying to explore as many different ways to draw as possible so I wasn't just stuck in that photorealistic, just draw like a printer. I wanted to find a way to do it because I didn't just want to be able to draw, I wanted to be able to make an illustration. There's so many people that can just draw things really well and I could do that, but I was really painfully aware, especially when I started to integrate with some of the foundation students, that I was like, these people can illustrate, like, I could draw, but I can't illustrate, if you know what I mean, like, I didn't…

Matt: So the collision of idea and technique.

George: Yeah, yeah.

George: I was just all technique at this point, and I needed to find a way to have some sort of language of working.

Matt:  So how did you refine those ideas? Was that through sort of discussion with tutors?

George: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I had a, I had a really poignant tutor called Vicky Cole who basically [00:07:30] took me under her wing.

George: It was like educationally the best experience of my life was that second year at college because you've got like a group of friends and peers that are on the same level as you. And you've got this really influential and almost motherly tutor who just tells you that everything you're doing is, you know, not right but it's going somewhere.

Matt: It's a part of the journey, it’s where you should be, you're at the right stage. 

George: You're doing the right thing and here's how you can keep doing more of it and being better at it, you know. It was the constant encouragement. I've never been encouraged like that. Obviously, I was encouraged by my parents, otherwise I wouldn't have ever made it but that was like a new level of encouragement that I'd never had before from a teacher. Where it just made you think, I can do something with this now. At this point, I'm thinking, because of that, that tutor, I was like, Oh, I could come back and do this. This is brilliant. I love this place. I'd love to come back and work here one day.

George: Yeah, it was, it reaffirmed that this was the way to go. So you mentioned, yeah, you

Matt:  So you mentioned, yeah, you go on to university. What were you studying?

George: BA in illustration, and that was at Cambridge School of Art, so the Anglia Ruskin campus. I had no preconception other than what I'd seen in a film or TV of what a university should look like and it was in this old, like 100 year old building, high ceilings, everything looked a bit worn and, like, used. And I was like, this is cool, man, I really want to go and do this. They had a real life drawing room and it just, like, the hallways just sort of, they filled me with that idea of, Ah, this is how university should look.

George: It being able to see the hallways and the classrooms and the work up on the walls and stuff. And it was just like, yeah, this feels right.

Matt: You skate, you're a skateboarder. So when did that kind of start and how, how… when did the two things start to collide?

George: So I started skateboarding when I was really early in high school, maybe like age [00:09:30] 13 or so. And I don't think I made the connection to art until maybe I was in the second year of college when you start to meet other people that are skateboarders and on an art course.

George: It never made sense before, you just thought they were two separate entities. You just were going out skateboarding, you didn't care about what was on the bottom of your skateboard. Or you didn't, you weren't aware that there were other skateboarders who made artwork in the world and it was this big significant thing until you meet other people that do it.

George: But I think because I was so captivated by having this strong identity at university and trying to be different from other people, you know, like you do, I really lent into the whole punky DIY skateboard aesthetic of making zines and edgy stuff to try and cement some sort of like cool identity to myself whilst at uni. 

Matt: Because like the skateboard community, it's sort of a safe space for everyone, isn't it?

Matt: Sort of, come one, come all, and it's… It's always, to me, as a non-skater, but someone who's always looked in enviously on the genre, it's very aesthetically driven, isn't it?

George: Yeah, certainly. You could put five different skateboarders in a room and they'd all be completely different from one another, I think.

George: Like, everyone's got their own cultural reference points, I think, in skateboarding. And, growing up, all of those [00:11:00] interests and tastes change, you know. You change what music you listen to and then that influences what t-shirt you're gonna wear, and what skateboarder you're going to watch and what magazine you're going to look at, and all of those things would change your influence as much as like the artwork that you look at and the drawings that you make. For me especially, through uni trying to really make it obvious that I was a skateboarder, and then the work that I make now, however many years, nearly ten years after [00:11:30] finishing university, couldn't be more different from that point. I finished uni, I freelance for a bit and just sort of put myself out there. Did a lot of free work to get skateboards made for small British companies, which is a great experience. So I was making skateboard graphics for small British companies. They wouldn't pay because the skateboard industry in the UK is on such a small scale compared to like the USA where they can pay you a lot of the time for the graphics, but I just wanted to make work, so I would just [00:12:00] put… I'd email all these different, you know, small skate shops and skateboard publications and companies in the UK just to say, can I make something for you?

George: And a couple of them got back and I got to make some graphics, which was really cool. And they printed them, put them on boards and sold them and they sent me a couple and I was like, Brilliant, I've made something now. 

Matt: There's something, there's value in the kind of kudos, isn't there?

George: Yeah, yeah, just being able to make it and be like, I'm this… I still live on a council estate, but I'm making, you know, skateboard [00:12:30] graphics, and all my friends are really excited for me.

George: You know, they're being sold in Birmingham. You know, how cool is that? 

Matt: Have you been to a park and someone's been on one of your boards? Or seen a T-shirt graphic?

George: T-shirt. Yes. Yeah, I've, you know, I've seen T-shirts around, but I've not seen a board. I've seen… I've had people send me clips from videos where someone's skated on a board that I've designed, which is cool.

George: You know, someone sent me a click from Thrasher Magazine. They posted a video and this guy was skating a board that I did for this company called A Third Foot, and they're from Birmingham. They're like a historic British company. Not sure if they're still going anymore, but they're one of the early British companies that sort of did everything themselves.

Matt: But in terms of someone as a young skater to have something in Thrasher magazine as the upper echelon.

George: They made this book about envelope art, because part of their magazine, people would submit, and this is a lot of the time, convicts would [00:13:30] submit letters to Thrasher with really artistic envelopes.

George: They'd put art all over the envelopes, send it to Thrasher, and they'd publish it, and they'd send them stickers or a t- shirt, whatever. And they'd been doing it for 38 years, I think, and they published a book about it. And they reached out to me, because when I finished uni, I would send them emails all the time, trying to get in the magazine and then years later, they… the art editor sent me an Instagram message, and I was like what the hell is this? And he was like, [00:14:00] you know, sorry this is so late, can you make an envelope and send it to us? We're going to publish it in this book, and I was like, yes. And I got up straight away and did it, you know, probably like on the same day. And then it's published alongside Mark Gonzales and Ed Templeton in a book, like in a real book, you know, that was, it was so exciting. 

Matt: So you then graduate from university and you make your way into teaching. [00:14:30] How did that start for you?

George: I just liked, the college felt like home. I had such a good experience there and I remember being in the third year studio at uni, and me and my classmates were just kind of chatting about what we were going to be doing after uni and I thought, I want to go back and teach.

George: I'd love to teach this, this is great, I love drawing, I can draw, I can teach this. 

Matt: So was the aspiration to have both, to, to teach, to have the creative?

George: Yeah, yeah. Well, I looked at who was teaching me at the time and they were all doing it. They were all published artists and they were working [00:15:00] alongside their teacher and I was like, what a great career. So I was working in a printers to make money and to figure out what I wanted to do. I'd already spoken to Vicky, my previous teacher, who was still at the college at the time, about coming in just to volunteer and get a feel for it first. And I did that, and she said, Come back later.

George: Go and get some experience. Go and do some things first before [00:15:30] you come back. So I think I was 23, applied to do the PGCE. Now I failed… I didn't fail, but the previous year, so when I was 22, I applied to do the PGCE, but I was too late, I had to get a placement and a mentor in the space of like a week, and I just wasn't prepared.

George: So that was maybe a blessing in disguise for me to work for another year and just keep freelancing, and in that time period between my failed attempt at applying for the [00:16:00] PGCE and actually getting it, I'd established freelance work with Vice and NME magazine so I was sort of like starting to build up that experience that was kind of necessary to justify me teaching the subject. So by the time I was 23, I applied way out of my depth, turned up to PGCE on the first day, a classroom full of, you know, adults and me. Technically an adult, but looking like a student. [00:16:30] They ask who has been in and had some teaching experience already. Every single person in the room put their hand up. I look around and I'm the only one without my hand up. And I'm thinking nah, this isn't for me and I call my mum and I'm like, I can't do this.

George: She's like, yes you are, you're doing it. And then that September of - I want to say 2016 - by December, I'm an employed member of staff at the same college that I was studying at and had the best time at.

Matt: [00:17:00] Do you remember, like, the first time you were teaching and you thought, this has gone great, this is really good, what were you doing with them that sticks out?

George: The best project, I think, that we thought, this is brilliant, myself and Aaron, one of my colleagues at the college at the time, we designed a skateboard design project. We were like, we've got to do it. And it was with Level 3 students and we had all of these sort of like 30 centimetre tall skateboards laser cut out [00:17:30] on wood from one of our colleagues at the university over the road from our college.

George: And we designed this massive project about the students designing these skateboards but thinking really contextually about the company that they're making it for and how it can reach that audience of that specific company. We chose all these different skateboard companies really carefully so they're all different aesthetically and that the students had to really think about what they were making. But they were all so excited to make these skateboards that they all probably made about three each. And they just [00:18:00] kept making them. It was brilliant, and we exhibited them all through the hallways of the college. And they loved it.

George: The kids really got behind it because we were really passionate about it and we were really excited, and we did the projects ourselves. We like to… if we set a project that was particularly long, like a four week project, or something that we're really passionate about, we do it as well. We would make it almost like Blue Peter, like here's one I made earlier.

Matt: Yeah, so what do you think are the sort of most important things to do or to think of when you're teaching young people creativity?

George: I think we had to, particularly when I was teaching, I thought I needed to believe what I was doing was believable from a student's perspective. Like they had to be able to invest in it.

George: I couldn't teach them something like art history or about Picasso, for example. Even though I really appreciate Picasso's work, I couldn't teach the kids about it because I needed to have lived it myself, I think. I'd like to teach based on the experience, so I'd like to teach about dealing with a short deadline when I was freelancing, for example, and just giving the kids something really quick.

Matt: So grounding it in real experience.

George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and you can do that to a degree, but I'd try and take some element of real experience in most of the projects that I'd set. We did, you know, we had our share of conceptual projects as well, where you can let the students really show who they are and what they want to do and bring their interest into it.

George: You give them the framework to do that, but we also like to do those industry based ones that gave them the value for their learning. Because sometimes with the conceptual projects the students were a bit, depending on the level of where they're at, if we're talking like level two or like, you know, a level three first year, they weren't too sure on how to navigate that at that point. So if we give them the industry sort of framework to it, there's almost rules to follow.  But they can still navigate it in a way that's natural to them.

Matt: Teaching is such an immersive and often really intensive experience. How did you manage this portfolio career of having a really busy creative schedule and a really immersive teaching job?

George: Sometimes I do sketches for Editorial directors and stuff in the class when I was working for Vice, I'd set drawing tasks if we're in a big drawing session and I'd set them off and say ‘right you got 15 minutes for this task’, and then I scribble down some sketches, take a photo on my phone and send it.

George: It would be cool for the students to see that but then also I'd just be working at night, you know, and because it's what you do. It justified my position as a teacher to teach the subject by doing the subject. [00:21:00] 

Matt: So more recently you've been working in a focus capacity as an illustrator. What have you been working on?

George: It's been fun. My career has changed from being editorial based where you're working to a very quick deadline, like five hours or a couple of hours, with relatively small, you know, like payments from that, but you're working on quite a few at the same time. And normally it comes from being emailed, you know, midday with a, [00:21:30] can you do it? Yes, of course I can. And you worry about the budget later just because you want to make it, you want to have that published bit of work. And they'd send you a bit of an idea about what they wanted the visual to look like, but you kind of go on the title and a bit of the context of what the article is. You design a rough sketch. And depending on how much you care about your time, then goes into how much effort you put into the sketch. And then you send that over, you get it approved, you work on the art, send it, and it's published normally the morning after. 

Matt: Wow. Okay, so it's an incredibly tight term.

George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you might get paid 30 days later.

Matt: I really want to understand a bit more about kind of… what your illustration style and influence and stuff now as well. But then also it sounds like you've got to be so multi-skilled as an illustrator. What are the kind of most important skills in your working life at the moment?

George: The easiest part is making the work and then I think most Freelance artists will know that marketing yourself on online is taxing, is so much to do. You've got to film yourself working, you've got to make Instagram reels, you've got to have a website, you've got to keep a record of all your finances, you've got to keep receipts for everything. You've got all of these administrative skills that if I hadn't been a teacher, I wouldn't know how to use a spreadsheet. 

Matt: That's interesting. 

George: Yeah, like those, those are [00:23:00] transferable skills and just people skills because you're communicating constantly when you're teaching and whether it's with people within your institution, there's students or…

Matt: It's a lot of relationship management, isn't it?

George: Yeah, and you learn your audience as well. You never read a room as much as when you're a teacher. Like, you've easily, you've either got the students from the start or you don't. So it helps to have those communication skills as well when you're freelancing. You need to be able to have thick skin as well.

Yes. There's a

Matt: Yes. There's a resilience, isn't there, to teaching that…

George: Yeah, definitely. And being told no [00:23:30] as an artist is, like, frequent or just being ignored. So it's a bit like being a teacher.

Matt: You have had your work on pretty impressive platforms, haven't you? 

George: Yeah. I made the decision to stop working with quick turnaround editorial illustrations just because it wasn't satisfying at all. The work would come and go and it was at a time where who was reading online articles and looking at the picture anymore? Like, there was no - not pride - but there wasn't any longevity to it. [00:24:00] I started looking for opportunities to make artwork that would stay. And I always liked t-shirts and I started to be able to make t-shirt graphics, much like with the skateboard and stuff, like just starting small and working with little bands.

George: I had a drawing selected by my friend's band, Basement, who are now like massive and supported Pixies in New York, which is really cool. And I was like, yeah, I did a t- shirt graphic for them years ago. And then I, in my previous job, making a lot of t-shirt graphics [00:24:30] that were worn by Ed Sheeran on stage, and I'm like, oh, I drew that at home in my council estate house.

Matt: I mean with that did, were they bespoke requests for those? How does that come about? 

George: What, for the Ed Sheeran stuff?

Matt: Yeah, so with the Ed Sheeran stuff or with Basement, you know. How did they again come to you with a concept that you…

George: It depends, like with the Ed Sheeran stuff, I was employed by a company that worked with him. These T-shirt concepts [00:25:00] were all mine.

Matt: Okay, so you are given free rein? 

George: Yeah, I had the autonomy on these graphics, because I was the graphic designer. It was my platform to make things that I thought worked and I could make my own collections and take influences from the things that I'm really passionate about. You know, like tattooing and really obnoxious music. And trying to translate that into graphics that I thought spoke my language. And then that helped as I was [00:25:30] making these T-shirt graphics. It piques the interest of other artists and stuff like that. 

George: So since being able to do those graphics, I make t-shirts for smaller bands, but more within my interest and influence, you know, so for a recent graphic I did for a band called End It in Baltimore, who are a hardcore band. I was so excited when they asked me to make a graphic and the references they sent me were just drawings that I did, you know, and I was like, wicked. 

Matt: So they were feeding your own work back to you?

George: Yeah, they just [00:26:00] said something like this. And I made it, no amendments. They just wanted something that I could make. It's taken however many years since university trying to find an identity. I'm 30 now and I'm now starting to think, ah, this is how I want to work.

George: I'm really interested in what I'm interested in. The music that I'm interested in, I live for death metal and hardcore. Now that feeds into my work entirely, and as much as we spoke earlier, skateboarding's a massive part, you know, as most skateboarders will know, it takes a part of your life and [00:26:30] never really leaves.

George: It doesn't come across in my work like it used to, because my work has changed and my interests have changed. The influences are still there, but not on a face value. I made a skateboard graphic for Heroin Skateboards recently, and that was another massive career highlight. And it was great to be able to be trusted just to make something that fulfilled their vision, but also in a way that matched what I do on a personal level.

Matt: The stages of a project like this for a band like Basement, how does that kind of process come together?

George: So, I think it varies from project to project, but for example, the band from Baltimore that I made the graphic for, they obviously, they sent me references of my own work. I go through their library as well. I go through their merchandise and their graphics and their album covers, song names, things like that. And you try and grab a little bit of context from what they already do and, not innovate, but you're trying to add your own flavour to it. Now it's a bit like going back to teaching again. They're all the things that you try and get the students to do.

George: You know, research, understand the context of what you're doing to make it relevant to your customer, your client. And it's a fine balance between, say, I really like this lyric in this song and I'll try and visualise that. And then I really like cobweb tattoos, so I'm going to put that in there somewhere. Because you want to combine and show off what you're all about, and maintain a visual language for your own website, social media portfolio, as well as meet the criteria of what the client wants.

Matt: And what about the, like, preliminary drawing stage? How… do you find that you land on a concept for a design pretty quickly? Or can it be quite a long process?

George: Yeah, it depends. If the client is easy, like the recent band I did work with, then I typically do like a two inch thumbnail sketch just to get the shape from my brain onto the page. And then I'll turn, I'll look at that and then I'll try and make a slightly more grounded and something that the client needs to look at, like a sketch that the client can see and visualise what it is.

George: And typically I'll do that sketch to a certain degree where I can scan it in, put it in Illustrator, and this is [00:29:00] specifically if I'm working with a band, so I can take their logo and any other like text ideas that I have and just place it around. So when you send it to the client, they can see it clearly, so you don't have to go back and forth and amend things. And a lot of these bands are American and there's a time difference, and I want to try and strike while the iron's hot and make sure that we're talking at the same time so I'm not waiting another 12 hours to get feedback, you know. 

Matt: So again, that's that [00:29:30] organisational management type stuff. And it sounds like your process is a real collision of analogue and digital  techniques.

George: Most illustrators and graphic designers specifically, like today, will use heavy digital processes. And I do as well. I spend a lot of time using an iPad to draw, and I think a lot of people do that, but I have to use a sketchbook because it's just how I was taught from day one in college. It was a sketchbook and you can never underestimate the power of just being able to [00:30:00] get all your rubbish ideas out and not be precious about it before you get to that idea that really works and you can refine it. But having an iPad was one of the best investments I made because making client amendments just became so much easier.

George: Before I would be scanning in the drawing, sending it over, they would want to change something even though they'd approved it. It happens. So you have to then creatively tippex things out, scan it in, Photoshop another bit in. You know, and using the [00:30:30] iPad, you can just do it all in one, like, process. It's brilliant.

George: I went through a period of everything having to be really crispy clean. It was based on the artwork I was really influenced by at the time, like old Santa Cruz skateboards graphics, which were so perfectly rendered by Jim Phillips. And I was obsessed with that clean, sharp, so I was ready to screen print perfect.

George: And then I was in a job where design and t-shirts, they had to be clean and pristine and logo based. And then, as a freelance [00:31:00] artist, and you can just make things look a bit crustier. And the bands like that. They want something that looks real, rather than too clean. And I go through all these processes to make it look a little bit, just a little bit more real when it's printed.

Matt: So like, you know, an aspiring illustrator, graphic designer, listening to this, what do they need to do?

George: I think equipment aside, you don't, an iPad isn't necessary. It's a luxury, if anything. It's great when you're at the level where [00:31:30] you can afford it to make plenty of client work and the iPad just pays for itself after you've got it, you know?

George:  It's not the key to make you a better artist at all. The key to that, or for me at least, until I realise now, like I said earlier, was just to make things that you're into okay. Draw what you love to draw and the technology is great and it's a really great tool, but it's not the answer. To begin with and I'm not just saying that because you know I'm slightly older now and I never had the iPad when I [00:32:00] was younger, but I think you've got to just stick with what you're passionate with and find that niche especially as an illustrator because when you're out there and you're working there's a lot of other people that are into the same stuff as you are. So there's a bit of competition but also there's a great community where you can, you know, meet and most of it is online.

George: But I've made loads of online friends who are all into the same sort of musical genres and we make similar sort of artwork, and it turns [00:32:30] out that we all, we make similar artwork for the same band. It's great. You make these really cool connections. But you only get that from drawing from what you're passionate about and making artwork about what you're into and whether that's your musical taste or your fashion. Or the films you like.

Matt: It's about locking into influences and ideas that you love, that you can live with for a long time.

George: Yeah, like when I very first started out at college, when I realised that I could draw but I couldn't illustrate. It's taken its time but now I've, I've [00:33:00] found that way of making work that is a lot of drawing but also distinctively my way of doing it.

Matt: Tattoos are another aspect of your work, which is really a big point of inspiration for you, isn't it? Alongside music and skateboarding.

George: Yeah, yeah. I think, I think most, like, people when they're a kid, they [00:33:30] think tattoos are cool as hell. And you think about the coolest tattoo you're gonna get when you're 18.

George: And then, when you eventually do get a tattoo, you think, Oh my god, I'm so glad I didn't get that skateboarding logo tattooed on my arm. You know, I… my dad has got some very old tattoos that he had when he was maybe like 15 by quite a famous local tattooer in Suffolk called Fat Bob.

Matt: I know it well.

George: Yeah. But I would always want to look at my dad's tattoos and I thought, these are [00:34:00] so cool. They're traditional, these are like age old tattoo designs that would've been put on navy servicemen and, and they sort of transcend time and have lasted through over a hundred years, some of these designs and they just maintain their bold, just artisticness.

George: And I started to get interested in tattooing whilst I was at university, and I think it's part of the skateboard culture stuff as well because a lot of skateboarders are tattooed. It's part of that like counterculture. [00:34:30] Outsider sort of thing, you know, and pairs up with the music and whatnot.

George: And you look at all the bands that you're into and they're all tattooed and things like that. And you think these are cool, but I don't really know a lot about it. And then it wasn't until a friend of mine passed away, I think, in 2016 or so, that I thought I'll go and get a tattoo as a tribute, you know, and I found an artist who's now a good friend of mine named Aaron Clapham, and I just fell in love with these like really old but just beautiful [00:35:00] tattoo designs that just they'd last forever you know. And I started to get really invested in the history of these tattoos and the stories behind them and none of the tattoos I have particularly have people ask what do they mean?

George: It's like it's an eagle fighting a snake and a frog, you know, like that's what it means. Yeah, but I'm interested in the history, and I've just got books and books at home of these old, you know…

Matt: Do you find as well that you know, when you look at that, although as you say, that's not narratively, that's not [00:35:30] capsulating an experience in your life where you fought a snake and a frog. But, do you, does it make you think of times in your life, things that you've been doing? Experiences you've been having around the time that you've been getting them.

George: Yeah, it sort of marks different periods of your life, and you can look at that and think, oh, I remember when I got that, and we were doing this or that.

George: And, but it's also, you're building a collection. It's like, I don't have a massive collection of art at home. I've got a few prints, but I look at my tattoos and think I'm collecting artwork, even though most of it is the [00:36:00] same artist. But it's all from the same books that we take reference from. These old tattoo artists from, like, pre and post war era, and that then feeds into my artwork as well.

Matt: So, we always wrap up with asking our interviewee for what we call a creative provocation. So, that's something that we ask them to set for our listeners. It can be a call to arms for creativity, a thought you'd like them to [00:36:30] have, an experience, anything. So do you have a creative provocation for our listeners?

George: Yeah, it's simple, just draw what you love. Honestly, like I spent four years telling, setting projects for people to do and this is the only one that I think would really stand and count is just to keep, if you're, well not draw, but make what you love. Make what you're interested in. And that's how I've found the most satisfaction and success in what I do now is just by sticking to what I love to do.[00:37:00]

Matt: Make space in your life for drawing the things you love. Perfect. Thank you very much. 

George: My pleasure, thank you.

Matt: Thank you for listening to this episode of Teach, Inspire, Create. A massive thank you to George. Such a brilliant opportunity to speak to him today. I just love his tattoos and his music interests and just so honest and open about the work that he makes. If you want to know more about George, you can visit georgeyarnton.com or find him on Instagram at yarnd0g. Y A R N D zero G. You can find the link to these in our episode description. So as always, I'm really hopeful that you're enjoying this podcast. If you are, take the time to share with a friend or rate us wherever you get your podcasts. This really helps us to ensure we're making the best possible podcast for you.

Matt: Once again, thanks for listening and until next time, take care.