David Zsako
Age 26
Email: davidzsako@yahoo.ca
Website: www.humanmetalart.com

1. What type of medium do you work with and explain how you use it? (Paint, design, photography, collage)
I use pigment ink pens, metallic gel pens, sharpies, and heavy stock paper for my illustrations. To get the photo-realistic effect I trace photographs that strike me in a certain way. The source images are usually extreme or sensational, mainly documentary or exploitation in nature. When I have the core concept for the piece down, I then start to add other components such as symbols, psychedelia, and representational elements. Once everything is in place; I spend endless hours reworking the drawing with over the top embellishments and finish it off by coloring in each individual self contained bubble not unlike painting by numbers.

I usually start with a stack of uniform 16×12 inch watercolor paper and draw a variety of figures on each. Then I go back and decide which ones i want to work on and go from there.

2. What was your main interest in producing this artwork, or is there a statement you wanted to convey?
My work is a struggle between the beauty of aesthetics and the vulgarity of content. I am naturally attracted to disturbing and strange things, events, and people that exist in the real world. I enjoy exploring unusual occurrences unhindered by censorship. At the same time I am a sucker for eye candy. My stylization process which has evolved naturally into what it is today fuses the work with an attractive repulsive quality.

3. Tell us about your creative process, do you have any rituals, routines you follow? How does your artwork come together? (Do you use found objects, image banks, etc)
Research can be the most time intensive and mentally draining aspect of my work. Finding the right picture can sometimes take weeks and more often than not, I do not start out with a specific image in mind. The final source photography, which can be made up of several unrelated pictures taken from newspapers, magazines, or the internet, often evolves throughout the course of the research period. The final illustration usually ends up light years away from anything I had envisioned from the beginning.

The hardest part in the creation process, which I have to go through with every single illustration, is to force myself to keep an open mind and have faith that the drawing will work out in the end. Fighting the urge to give up on a piece is the most necessary routine I engage in on a regular basis. It was fairly difficult to keep going when I first started making this type of illustration, but after some of my best accomplishments were born out of what I had initially thought were failures, it became easier to trudge through self doubting phase of subsequent pieces.

4. How did you get started with your artistic career?
I come from a family of practicing professional artists, so to take an artistic path in life was not a very difficult choice to make and was not really met with any resistance. It is difficult to make a living as an artist especially if there are children in the mix, but being a practicing artist is something that I never question, to me it is just a given even though I may have to subsidize my art with a day job.

5. What would you say is one of your greatest accomplishments?
Having an amazing domestic life with a beautiful wife, a young son, and a baby on the way.

6. Where does your inspiration come from? Or is there any particular movement, artwork or artist you find yourself influenced by?
Heavy metal, horror movies, and porn. Violence, gore, aggression, and sex to me are beautiful. I find a lot of inspiration in visceral things and by that I mean I give a lot of weight to things that appeal to the instinctive side of me rather than the intellectual side. I think that is why I have such a hard time describing or talking about my art, what it means, and how to interpret it; it is what I feel more than what I know. I am also a news junkie and I love political satire. Even though I do not make politically relevant pictures, the absurdities that are involved in the everyday workings of the world always seems to be in the back of my mind as I create.

7. How do you see your artwork evolving from now?
I think from here I will start making more complex large scale works with even more detail and hopefully I can try to expand my colour pallet as well. Other than that I feel the more pieces I create, the work will evolve naturally on its own as I grow and gain more experience as an artist. - IC