It has been a while since we showcased another artist on here.  The internet is filled with talented people and I had the pleasure of sharing sometime with a friendly artist named David Cousens.  He has many Photoshop tutorials across the web and here is his most recent one: Link

Well on with the interview, the guy gave some great answers as well! 

Dave could you give a brief description on how would you describe your take on illustration? What are your strengths as an artist?

My take on illustration is that we’re trying to make art that other people like that hopefully we enjoy too, that’s the difference between Fine Art and illustration; fine artists make work for themselves whilst us illustrators want to eat and make our mortgage payments so we make art that other people will pay us for!.  I always try to include one or more of the following elements: excitement, humour, style, dynamic movement/energy and sometimes boobies.  My strengths as an artist are that I have a fairly good eye for action scenes and a love of drawing all sorts of silly stuff in the background to keep people entertained.


Partnering with your wife and creating Cool Surface, that was a pretty courageous endeavor, with some of the normal things that could cause disputes in relationships: Have there been any arguments that were work related?

No work related arguments, no. We save those for our free time. It was a pretty big risk really, it was either going to work really well or be a complete disaster, luckily it was the former.  It’s great because most people don’t get to choose their co-workers and having your wife/best friend with you all day makes you really close; we sometimes do that slightly scary hive mind thing of finishing each other’s sentences but we’re not quite the Borg just yet.  Plus we’re expecting our first baby in November so I’m getting to experience all of the baby’s kicks and movements whilst being at work.  Not many Dads have that luck.  Also, most importantly, work is the one place Sarah lets me be in charge and make all of the decisions!  In these moments I get to pretend I have free will, it’s a glorious thing.


You have many tutorials all around the web, specially on Advance Photoshop and PSDfan, what motivates you to share with other artist your work process?

I think one of the saddest things is when somebody has some knowledge on how to do something and they don’t share it with other people.  It’s like they’re afraid if they share their tricks they will become weaker as an artist.  I had it a few times when I was starting out and people that I admired would only give vague answers that evaded the questions.  It’s really selfish as someone will have shared knowledge with them on their way up.  You lose respect for people when they act like that as you can see they’re scared.  I read once that to become a great artist you should give away all of your tricks so that you’re forced to keep learning new ones to stay ahead of the pack.  I’ve had numerous people teach me new skills and tricks over the years so it’s only fair that I tell people everything I know.  Besides, someone can know everything I know and we’ll still come out with a completely different picture, that’s part of the fun.  I love it when people get in touch to say that they’ve found my tutorials really helpful as it’s nice to know you’ve made a difference.  I want people to say “David Cousens?  He was great; he really helped me learn something.  Plus, he was damned handsome too…”


Cartoons, comics, and video games motivated me as a child and still today as an artist, what are somethings that motivated you in the past and still to this day?

Haha, all of the same stuff!  I still watch cartoons, read comics and play video games and they have a huge influence on my artwork and life in general.  Our office is filled with geeky stuff like graphic novels, Revoltech Transformers, Gashapon Zelda: The Wind Waker toys and a replica of the Grail Diary from Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade.  There are only two other motivational factors that I’ve developed as I’ve got older, one of them is money and the other one is my wife.

Can’t I let them both fight it out over me with a huge bidding war and lots of free gifts and toys to sweeten the deal? 



As a primarily digital artist, how important is traditional art for you today?

Traditional art is less important for me these days as all of my work is digital (I use a Wacom Cintiq 21UX to draw on my screen directly into Photoshop).  I still scribble into a sketchbook for ideas but that’s pretty much it these days.  Traditional skills however are very important and really help my understanding in what I’m doing.  Knowing about traditional methods of painting such as under-painting and adding a layer of glaze to an image applies just as well in Photoshop as it does on a canvas.  Every artist should learn about traditional methods whether they need them or not, they will help you understand how to approach problems with new methods.  The only thing I have against traditional art is how much longer it takes to clean up afterwards.  Plus, if there’s paint around, I will find a way to sit on it.  It’s like a really rubbish mutant power I have.



Could you list some inspiring artist that have motivated you?

I’ve always loved Chris Bachalo for the fun he has in his drawings, and Adam Kubert for making everything look cool.  I’ve recently discovered Jeffrey ‘Chamba’ Cruz who I love and I’m also a fan of French artist Bengal for his use of colours (he seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet though).  One of the things I love about the internet is how I keep discovering new artists every week.  There are so many amazingly talented people out there.  In the past when I used to see someone great I used to be jealous and intimidated, now I just feel impressed and say “Cool!  Now I just need to work out how they did that…”.



What video games are you playing if any? (Does your wife play with you?) 

I always find time to play video games as I find that I do my best artwork if I’ve unwound the night before.  At the moment I’m just finishing up Zelda: Twilight Princess for the second time, but it’s not as good as I’d remembered (bits of the game definitely felt rushed and why the hell did I have to play through 2 hours of nothing before getting to the game?!?).  Wind Waker is still our favourite Zelda; the animation still looks good now.  Sarah and I always play games together, you wouldn’t believe how many hours of Smash Bros Brawl we’ve clocked up together!  Sarah could play that game until we died of starvation.  And New Super Mario Bros wii was hysterical as Sarah had the habit of knocking me into a pit of lava to stay safe, then she’d panic when I died and would wait for me to return.  I had a habit of going into a bubble as soon when Sarah was dead which would kill me too!  We got much better as the game progressed but we still have 2 of the final star levels to beat.  Anyone that clears world 9-7 has my respect!

When it’s a one player game, the best player takes control while the other one watches and helps (read: mocks mercilessly when it all goes wrong).  I take the platform games because my reaction times are good and Sarah takes things like Warcraft because she’s great at multi-tasking (my World of Warcraft skills are faintly embarrassing where as Sarah could successfully PVP with someone for over 10 minutes!).  Having both of us play together is great as the excitement is multiplied exponentially.  If you think having that  monster jump out of the refrigerator in Resident Evil 4 was scary, imagine having the person next to you jump off the sofa screaming in fright while the monster attacks you!  I almost bought some plastic sheets for the sofa.



Could you break down how long it takes to complete a piece like the Link illustration? (From start to finish)

It all depends on what sort of day I’m having.  Some days I can knock an illustration like that out of the park in less than a day (we call those good days) but other days I can’t draw for love nor money (which is problem when you *are* drawing for money!) and it can take a while.  If I’ve had an off day, normally I see what mess I’ve made the following day, laugh at my own incompetence and delete the lot and start again.  The ‘Broken Link’ piece was relatively straight forward to draw, but the writing up phase of that tutorial took a lot longer, I try to explain as much as possible to make it useful, which can take quite a while.  I generally find that if I plan things out a little bit at the start it goes much better than when I just hope things will work out when I throw a lot of textures at a file.
My normal process begins with roughs where I make sure composition and anatomy are pretty good, then I go to the lines where I start to add details and improvise to make sure it doesn’t feel like I’m tracing my roughs.  Then comes the mind numbingly tedious job of flat colours which if I’m lucky Sarah will do for me (she’s much better at it anyway) and then we get to the fun of shading the colours which is where the illustration really comes alive.

Dave, how would a cheeky bastard like you survive the coming Zombie Apocalypse? 


I’d easily survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but not because I’m kickass with a shotgun or have some insane survival skills.  Nope, my survival would be through obliviousness!  Think about it, as illustrators Sarah and I spend a LOT of time upstairs in our home office with music playing, most of our shopping is done online so the only time we need to go out of the house is when we’re shopping for food in the supermarket, where, lets face it most of the people in there seem like zombies anyway.  We’d have no idea of all of the brain munching chaos going on outside.  I figure eventually I might start to wonder why my twitter feed has gone a little quiet by which time I’d look outside to see the armed forces clearing up the zombie mess.  Crisis averted, plus I can draw a good zombie so there would undoubtedly be lots of zombie based illustration work after wards so not only would I survive, I’d be in profit!  Bring on the zombies.

Thanks David for the Awesome Interview! 

For more on David please check out his awesome website and also follow him on Twitter as well! 

The Art of David and Sarah Cousens:  www.CoolSurface.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/DavidCousens

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