I have known Forrest McKinley for over fifteen years. Ironically he was my boss at a former place of employment in the technical field. I have to admit, for a time, this was my favorite place for employment due to the fact that I have met some of the finest minds and truest souls and it was actually a pleasure to come to work.
Forrest and I both held a sinister passion for art and also shared multiple interests in movies, books, spirituality and even cats. Not only did he rival me in oddness, though I believe I may have outmatched him in the field of eccentricities (though that is debatable).
He and his wife Richelle live quietly with a herd of cats. He was my first choice for doing an Artist of the Month.
His style is distinct and his imagination rampant. The interview follows below:
When did you first began to draw?
I cannot remember when I first started drawing, but I remember drawing a lot through elementary school and high school. More than anything I remember drawing a lot with my brother and one of our friends back in my early teens. Back then we were really trying to find our style. Whereas most of them drew images out of comic books, I was leaning more towards images out of Mad Magazine and Garfield.
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What motivated you to continue drawing?
There are quite a few things that kept me drawing in the early years. I had twin brother who was drawing and I had friends that were drawing quite a bit. Later on, once I had started to really find my own style, I really discovered the joy of cartooning. Interestingly enough, I was 30 years old, when I started to really like what I was putting out, but I think that all artist, cartoonist included, are always so critical of their work.
I find that inspirations change over time, who were your earliest inspirations?
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| Paul Smith |
after month).
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| John Byrne |
Nowadays I get my inspiration from a wide range of sources, which can trigger my process. Many times it can be due to conversation or just a spin-off of another image just get me thinking. I don’t immediately go to laying out the picture, but rather usually keep a few ideas churning in my mind, especially if I am needing to look at reference or inspirational pieces.
Most often, when I am going about routine work around the house or my drive to work, I get a rough image in my head. Without really thinking about it, I layout out a crude rough draft and let the draft settle and work itself out in my head. After that it is a matter of just roughing it out on Bristol board, coming back in to really tighten up the lines, and then once the line work has been worked out, porting the image into ProCreate, and digitally inking and coloring the piece.
Your inking style is minimalistic, you have mastered the use of thick and thin lines to accentuate detail and shape. It works extremely well, is this a style that you cultivated over time and when did you notice how effective it was in portraying what you were trying to convey graphically?
I started this technique when I was 30, when I started using a micron pen set. Besides the various line weights there was also the brush pen in the set. When I started using those pens, it really just gave me a new perspective on my own work.
Sadly, traditional inking has always been tough for me, so about 2 years ago when I started doing work on my iPad in ProCreate with the iPencil, I was able to take the traditional technique and put it into a more forgiving digital media. Finally having a way to ink and color on a level that I felt comfortable helped me to push my work to a new level. So it really goes without saying almost, that no matter where we are in our process, we just need to keep experimenting and learning until our we find the way that resonates with us.
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| This is an excellent example of how Forrest uses thick and thin lines to accentuate detail. Sometimes less is more. |
Who are your current inspirations and what direction do you want your style to develop?
With the Internet at our fingertips, I take inspiration from a host of nameless artist that are posted on Pinterest and scads of other sites. Besides that, I am currently inspired by comic book artists like Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos, who has taken cartooning to a new level, and by this new age of cinema which has really showcased HD filming and state of the art special effects.
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| Paul Young |
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| Humberto Ramos |
What books and authors inspire you creatively?
Neil Gaiman is hands down one of the most inspirational authors that I have come across. Whether it is the fairy tale feel of Stardust or his dark version of Alice in Wonderland when he did Neverwhere, his work just pulls from so many myths, legends, and tales that he always creates such a vivid sense of the world that his stories are set it.
Another artist that stands out is Wayne Barlowe’s Inferno, where he did his translations of what Hell looks like. Years later, after doing Inferno and the Brushfire Illuminations, he was inspired to write the book God’s Demon. I was so struck by an artist so passionate with his work that he crossed over into another medium.
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| Wayne Barlowe |
When you are creating, what music do you listen to or what do you have in the background while you draw?
For years I struggled with trying to create the perfect space when drawing. I used to sit at my drawing table with 3 or 4 albums queued up, but I just stared at the paper with some sort of drawing block. It was a few years back that I found myself just playing a movie in the background, that I was able to relax and just sketch, draw, ink, and color with more flow.
So now I always have some movie that I have seen a dozen times playing in the background. Every once in a while I will look up to catch a particularly visual scene, but for the most part I generally only watch about 5 to 10 minutes of the movie as I get wrapped up in the work that I am doing, which is good as I am fairly slow when I am doing a piece.
What current project or projects are you working on and where do you want to go with your art?
I currently have three projects that are going on. The first is the short term project of doing standalone pieces that will be sold as prints and tees and my second is doing a gallery show in Oct. 2020 in the Paseo.
My third is my long term project of The Sins of Youth, which is a twisted children’s book that is not met for children. I am also, after all these years, going to be establishing my own imprint – Broken Dreams Studio, which will be launched in early 2020, and will be the studio brand that I will be releasing all of my cartoon work through. So far 2019 has been a great year for me to really tighten up a lot of my work and channel it in the right direction, and now I am really wanting to make 2020 the year I start showcasing my work locally and on the internet.
Below are samples of Forrest's work:
Note: All images are copyright protected by the artist and should be treated as such.
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| Commissioned Piece |
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| Every Christmas Forrest designs a Christmas Card, this is one of them. |
