Q.01: So you are not French, in fact, you are English. How did you come up with the name?
I didn’t come up with it. I grew up skating with a bunch of older guys, I was the gromit and they all have nick names, like Grill, Munt, Brow, Rat, Laup etc and I just had this Etnies t-shirt I got from france and they all reckoned I had a hair cut like a french exchange student . So I got call French and it stuck, that was when I was about 12. I have friends that I’ve known for 10 year and they have no idea what my real name is.

Q.02: Then, please tell us you profile.
Well, I have 1st Class BA Honours Degree in Fine Art from Staffordshire University. I graduated in 2002. While at Uni I studied at KU in Lawrence, Kansas as well. After graduating I went to Australia for a year as Artist in Residence at a private school in a small town called Orange. It was an amazing experience, I was out in the country, about 4 hours in land from Sydney. In the same year I just spent time making art work and sending drawings to anyone who liked what I was doing. When I got back I worked in a skateboard shop near my home town for about 3 months and then moved to London. The whole time I would draw on all my days off and most nights after work. I’d just kept creating work and sending it to people, gradually I started to get small works in magazines and for other small brands, the most exciting was creating a board graphic for Heroin Skateboards for the 2nd Illustrator series. At this point I decided to reduced my hours at the skateshop to 3 days a week, to concerntrate on my drawing. The biggest stepping stone of my career so far was being asked to create a “Black Metal Homeware” collection for Silas, meeting the guys there has really helped shape the way I look at my work and helped me develop my direction for the future. What I’ve learned from them is priceless. At the same time I started to work at Cide skateshop in Waterloo, South London. It was an amazing shop, owned by some friends of mine. I ran the shop 3 days a week and helped look after the small gallery in the cellar, it was really exciting time. But like all things that came to an end about a year and half ago when the shop had to close. Thanks to Cide I managed to have time to create my work, send it out to anyone who was interested and have a small enough amount of cash to pay my rent and a little food. Luckily at this point my artwork was starting to pick up, I was invited to send work to 2k, as well as other brands and magazines. I’ve worked for loads of people now and had loads of fun and develop my skills. I’ve drawn wor for: Century Media, Creamtorium Records, Nike Town, Deal Real Records, Fallen Footwear, Zero Skateboards, Altamont, Southern Lord Records, Nuke’em Skateboards, Death Skateboards, ADIO, Nitro Snowboards, M&C Saatchi, Creature Skateboards, Blackest Rainbow Records, Illustrated People, The BBC, Lowlife, Antiz Skateboards, Pointer Shoes, Silas, 2k By Gingham, Suburban Bliss, Atlantic Records, Wanadoo Broadband, Olympus Cameras, Heroin Skateboards, Emerica Footwear, Casio G-shock, Dave Denis and more, including a wide range of magazines and newspapers all over the world. I love creating artwork for small underground projects the most, like metal bands, zines, tiny skate companies, things that are 100% true to themselves, the only problem being they can’t pay that much, but a good mix of all types of work is healthy I think. Along with this I’ve continued to exhibit in many group shows all over the world, Sweden, France, the UK, the States, Holland and Australia. In February this year my friend Fos and I had a show together at KCDC in Brooklyn called “Conventional Weapons”, it was so much fun. Since then I’ve had my 1st solo show, “Funerality” at the Monster Children Gallery in Sydney, Australia, in June. So as always I’m trying to keep busy.

Q.03: Are you a self-taught artist? When did you start to draw?
I started drawing when I was about 3 I think. I always wanted to draw, I never really wanted to do anything else really. When I was a kid people would ask “what do you wanna do when you grow up?” and I’d always say be an artist. I went to art school, but I think art school just tell’s you more about how much a person wants to make art, than actually teaching people how to make art. Really it just gave me 3 years of freedonm to create the artwork I wanted to and experiment and help develop my skills.

Q.04: What made you step into the creative world initially? Who were your influencers at the beginning?
When I finished University I just kept making art work and showing it to people. I never really thught about where I wanted to go with it, I just had this over whelming urge to draw. I think when it came to actually wanting to make art work as a job, my friend Marcus Oakley was a great inspiration. He helped me allot on how to go about getting into sending people my work and getting myself out there and I gradually learned more like this from other people like Fos and other london artists I’ve gradually gotten to know.

Q.05: It seems you are obsessed with skateboard, birds, skull & bone and death metal. Where do you get inspiration from?
Well I think that question answers itself, I get my inspiration from Heavy metal, Skateboarding, and all the themes often involved in both. Like monsters, zombies, myths legends, war, old skateboard and album cover art. All those things that I have around me have always influenced my work. Like the work of Jim Phillips, Pushead, Ed Repka, really anyone involved in that sort of imagery.

Q.06: How is your process of work? Do you use photograph or anatomy book for your reference?
I often work from a load of different references. I like to use photo’s, books, other illustrations. I’ll probably use around 4 or 5 different images and references to make one drawing. I usually draw it in pencil first and then redraft a few times, adding, erasing and then when I’m happy I’ll ink it and add the final detail.

Q.07: What do you always keep in mind when you draw?
Well often what it’s for and depending on that I have to change parts of each drawing. For instance if it’s for a shirt, what colour it’s gonna be printed on determines the shading and lines. So often the job, changes what I need to be aware of. That can also change the amount of detail I’ll put in and even the subject matter. So really it’s just a matter of what it’s for, even if I’m making work for a show, that can still depend on what sort of show it is.

Q.08: Do you tend to concentrate on a single work or like to work on many projects at the same time?
I tend to work on as may things as I can at once. I like to have about 3 or 4 going at once, often it helps because I can leave one thing and go and work on another, and then come back to it with a fresh view. That helps me change parts and gives me a newer, critical view of the piece. At the moment I think I have about 8 drawings I’m working on. All at different stages, some just outlines, others penciled, a few ready to ink and I think one half inked.

Q.09: Can you describe for your experience for making design for 2KbyGingham?
Making t-shirt’s for 2k is fun and pretty liberating work, because there’s not really a brief I just offer a bunch of personal works to Yoshi and then he comes back and says which he thinks will work. I mean, the closest thing that there is to a brief is sometimes he’ll see something I’ve done and just suggest maybe something like that? Which is always helpful. It’s quite a refreshing way of working, relaxed and relatively free. I mean obviously if it’s not a picture that looks good on a shirt then it’s not gonna get used, so that's really the only draw back.

Q.10: What means to you to design T-shirts?
T-shirts are a great thing to create artwork for. It’s probably the closest thing to just having a canvas to work on, except people can actually buy it and use it every day. In some respects it seems better to create shirts than just selling art works. It’s a way of making a drawing that if people like, they can buy at an affordable price and enables them to show that taste in an every day environment. You can tell allot about a person from their shirt. I generally wear death metal band shirts. So you can always see, that I’m into metal. I have a few good other shirts from old skate brands and movies I’m into, so again from that you can tell what I’m into and maybe a little about my personality and sense of humour. I love David Shrigley’s humour so I love ewearing those shirts. It’d be great to think that if a person bought a shirt I drew, that you can tell what sort of person and taste they have.

Q.11: You designed many T-shirts for several companies, how do you approach to each T-shirts design?
Again it depends allot on the company. Some people know exactly what sort of thing they want and have a straight forward art direction, others are pretty liberal and will let you do whatever you like. I kinder like it somewhere in between, where there’s an idea handed to me and I can run with it and develop it in my own way. I love getting to do whatever I want, but often there is a need to tailor it to a brand to make it look a certain way. With 2k it’s much more about making it as an artwork on a shirt, with Silas it was about making something with a story line and a style that fit’s them. I really love making shirts for metal bands, because it’s a dream come true and also I get make gorey stuff and often stuff which I love to draw but would never really get used. I just did a shirt for “Krisuin” and I got to draw skull’s, snakes, Pentagram’s and inverted crucifixes.

Q.12: All your T-shirts are done by one color drawing, you are not interested in using multiple colors?
It’s not really that I’m not interested in colour, I like using colour and I have made a few shirt’s that have allot of colours. It’s just often people only wanna print in 1 or 2 colours because it’s cheaper and easier, and often I just draw a picture and the company I’ll make it for with decide the colours, depending on what shirt it’s printed on. But I’d love to make more colourful work in the future. Also I think there’s allot to be said for artwork that stand’s out on it’s own in black and white, I think the simplicity of 1 or 2 colours can have a more effect appearence.

Q.13: Which musician or skater do you want to wear your T-shirts?
I’d just like people to buy then because they’re into the designs, I would love it if some one like Glen Benton from Deicide or Ozzy Osbourne was gonna wear one. Oh! Actually, I think I’d be so rediculously happy if Ozzy had one of my shirts. He’s a personal hero and a living legend.

Q.14: Which place or town is your favorite, and why?
I have so many places that I love, and hold sentimental memories for me, like Lawrence, Kansas, Glasgow, Paris, New York etc. But I think that really my favourite is my home town of ALDERSHOT. Just because that's where my parents are, it’s where I grew up, all my best and oldest friends are from there and I have some many fond memories and experinces. It’s molded me I think, into the person I am. You can take me out of A-shot, but you can’t take the A-shotme outta of me.

Q.15: What are you working on right now?
At the moment I’m working on a series of boards for Zero skateboards, I’m gonna start working on a few t-shirt’s for a shop in Sydney, Australia called Supply. They want all old school metal style shirts. I also have a few other show’s to collect together work for and create some new work as well and I need to create some new shirts for 2k.