"Asylum" Workshop

"Asylum" by Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison London — United Kingdom    @destill    www.destill.net

Mike Harrison created a diverse and somewhat delicate collection of work for what was, on the whole, quite a brooding and ominous chapter. Here we discuss and allow him to reflect on his subtlest piece "Asylum".

Justin Maller "Asylum" is an interesting piece mate, a bit of a departure for you! What's the concept here?

Mike Harrison Yes you're right, it's not the usual type of illustration you'd see from me, but from the start of 2011 I told myself i'd try some new techniques and styles and i'm really pleased how this one came out. I based this piece on an obsolete world and wanted to represent this not literally, but by using abstract, geometric shapes to convey the concept. For example the films I am legend, 28 days later and resident evil have a similar theme based around an asylum or safe haven, and that's what I wanted to to create.

Justin Maller The end result is quite different to the start - how did the workshop effect your development here?

Mike Harrison I put the piece in at a very early stage, perhaps too early as most of the comments were along the lines of 'cool start, look forward to where this goes'. So I knew I needed to flesh it out some more. The feedback from the next iteration was that it needed 'something' to boost the concept or make it more interesting, as at that time it just looked like a bunch of abstract shapes. I then decided to make it alot more detailed by adding linework for the shading, as if I had a light source coming from the top. By now I knew there was enough detail so I submitted my last iteration. The feedback was good but it still needed something so a suggestion was made to add some sort of figure or character to enhance to concept. I liked that idea so I used 2 shapes to create a figure of sorts, as if he was making his way across the abstract landscape to reach the asylum. A few broken off shapes scattered around the image and I was done!

Justin Maller As usual, you had some amazingly strong work in this chapter; I'm hesitant to ever give you the Featured Artist for fear you'll succumb to the curse and stop producing! What were your personal favourites from the chapter?

Mike Harrison Ha, thanks mate, but I will continue to produce work for DC whatever happens! I had a few favourites from this chapter, it's hard to pick though as when you think we've made one of our best chapters to date, our members create even more amazing work on the next! 'Disco Very' from Rik was great, pure eye candy, 'jnk-2' from Ehren was an amazing piece, 'Obsoletus' from Saddo was a sick drawing and 'Preconscious' from Niklas was great, one of his best works to date. On the whole though, amazing work from all!