Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (1)

Nuts & Bolts: J.K. Potter

October 15, 2008 This week's Nuts & Bolts interviewee is artist J.K. Potter, a prolific illustrator of genre books who works exclusively with manipulated photographs and other digital media. I asked him about his work on James P. Blaylock's The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives (Subterranean, November 2008), a collection of steampunk stories that seems rather distant from Potter's work in the horror and surrealist realms.

Genreville: When did you first encounter this book or the idea behind it? What attracted you to the project?

J.K. Potter: The St. Ives book is the total brainchild of Bill Schafer, editor/publisher of Subterranean Press. Bill suggested this project to me many years ago, as he knew I had illustrated a James Blaylock St. Ives book back in the early 90's. That was Lord Kelvin's Machine, published by Jim Turner's Arkham House. Bill liked the illustrations so much that he bought a few of them. I think he carried the idea of a Langdon St. Ives anthology around in his mind for a long time. When the finished manuscript finally hit my doorstep last year I was unprepared for the size and scope of this book. So this is the vision Bill carried in his head all this time, yikes! I was knocked out. With the manuscript came instructions to pull out the stops with the illustrations. A prodigious task to say the least. Bill usally gives me complete freedom to do what I want, but when I work for him I try to create images that appeal to his personal taste. So in some respects it becomes a collaboration.

The 19th century steampunk madness of it all was just over the top. The St. Ives stories have this Jules Verne meets Sherlock Holmes ambiance with some Monty Python craziness thrown in. It's so different than most of the modern science fiction and horror I usually illustrate.

GV: What challenges did you face when working on it?

JKP: It's very difficult material to illustrate photographically but it's also great fun. I got to dress up my friends in funny costumes and camp it up. The photosessions were hilarious. It's hard to come up with the right costumes every time though. Sometimes I just have to fake it and hope that the readers won't be too critical.

GV: How did it inspire or discourage you? How will that experience affect your current and future projects?

JKP: Well, I think you can tell from my pictures that Blaylock provided me with loads of inspiration. There was a definite surplus of fantastic imagery. Blaylock's imagination careens out of control over and over again. It was difficult deciding which scenes to illustrate. There were so many wild scenarios I wanted to illustrate but couldn't. I had to knuckle down and choose. Of course every project has its discouraging moments on the road to completion. Deadlines, budget, even illustration placement can box you in on a project this big. It's a bit like pushing a big stone up a hill, but once it's over all the trouble and effort is rewarded.

As for future projects, I have completed a well illustrated Tim Powers trilogy for Subterreanean Press that I am very proud of.  And surprisingly Bill Schafer has also managed to coax James Blaylock into writing a brand new St. Ives story which I will be illustrating, so you haven't heard the last of  Mister Langdon St. Ives.

Next week's Nuts & Bolts will feature author and publisher Kelly Link discussing Pretty Monsters: Stories (Viking, October 2008), her first YA collection.

Posted by Rose Fox on October 15, 2008 | Comments (1)