Gaurab Thakali

0:00 [Applause]

0:04 hello everyone I'm Gaurab Thakali and I'm an illustrator I grew up in kathmandu nepal I moved here to the uk with my family in 2006 and I've been living in london since I also studied illustration at campbell college of arts and I'm just gonna talk you through some of my work and the process that I use and yeah I draw a lot.

0:35 And I also like paint use screen prints and also like digitally create images quite a lot as well and a lot of my work like contains like landscapes and lots of figurative scenes with people like dancing or lots of music related images and those those are some of the like influences that I've kind of gained from kind of growing up around south london and also my home which is in the pool and so I'm going to talk you through some of this like just the sketches like how I start working all my work starts on a piece of paper and everything like before then is kind of done through using like lots of images and lots of research and yeah from then on I just start sketching and I think it's very important to be able to see something right in front of me like something tangible so I can kind of imagine what the next step will be from then on these are just some examples of like sketches that I've done over the years like for music like album artwork and posters for like venues also drawings for like magazines and stuff like that. And this is kind of like example of how the outcome or like sometimes look like and sometimes it's very different but it's every time I use like digital or like paint or anything I try and achieve like sort of like keep it similar to a lot of levels but also in all those processes there's always something new that I learned from it which I can like use it across different like styles and stuff and now I'm going to talk to you about some of the commercial projects that I worked on like last few years.

2:46 So this project was for camden town brewery and it was just I was asked to design like all the seasonal labels for the beers that was going to be released for 2020 and ♪

2:58 all the the theme for the artworks were basically based around like music as you can see is kind of like the summer and like the beer 2020 which is like based around like it's kind of like a wintry beer so it's a little bit like in a cozy like club and stuff like that it's nice to like draw it on a paper so I can actually wrap it around the cans to see what it's going to actually look like from forward and stuff like that and here's like an example of the actual outcome more glossy furs and when I'm not working on like breweries and stuff I also do lots of like editorials and also like book covers and stuff like that with editorials it's always nice because there's always something ♪

3:51 the subject is always changing and it's so quick and I have to like you have to work very fast as well to like turn it around and the topic can range from like book like film review to like mother's day or like how people are living and like doing like that pandemic like doing the coveted line stuff like that moving on here's another sort of slide which is kind of again like it's all editorial based images which is quite quick and growing up as a skateboarder it was always a dream to have one of my images or a few of my images on a board and working with this bristol-based company was a great opportunity to like show you what I could like what could be done in like a piece of wood moving on this piece was basically for a conference in malmo in sweden so the artwork wasn't only like used for the posters it had to like kind of be used in a be taken apart and used in different settings like designed into like spaces or into like little leaflets and also like clothing as well and luckily I like I had the opportunity to work with a spatial designer to like kind of take take the artwork apart and like think through it.

5:28 And then use it to like design it around where the events were taking space and moving on some of the images I have worked on.

5:40 This is probably one of my favorite projects because it was with a comedian called hannibal buress and I actually messed him on instagram and he replied back to me saying yeah can you do your artwork from for my post there for his event and from then on we just moved on to like designing the the posters which is quite weird so when I'm not working on like commercial projects I always like try and spend some time like listening to a lot of music or also like working in my own projects which are like lots of edition like prints and with the prints I always find it really fun to like experiment also like try different ways of like creating an image or using like digital techniques or whatever.

6:38 There is that I can use to like kind of like explore the how how I can make something look and a lot of these feature like the music that I'm listening to like artists like sonra or like bill evans or like dorothy ashby and they always it's always inspired by the artists as well like kind of like showing their energy that they like produce when they're like making their music and like putting them in like positions where you feel like that's where they belong like how like sunrise like kind of floating in the middle of ocean where there's waves like thrashing around him and again like personal projects like some of these are like kind of like also experimentation of like colors and like using drawings from my observations it's always nice to have lots of images that I can just go away.

7:36 And then like draw in front of me and use that to like compile an image where I can like experiment with like printing techniques or just the kind of like the topic around it again it's this this these are like the same sort of images that I've done like recently which is kind of using like drawings from life. And so talking about like posters and stuff every time I kind of worked on a lot of like personal work it always helps kind of like me like get more like commission work and stuff as well.

8:19 So the the first image on the left is like poster that I designed for guinness and boiler room for nottinghal carnival in 2016.

8:30 And the the next two images were designed for the events that took place in bazaar in brussels but the really nice part of that project was I had to kind of use their like show off their like amazing venues which is like their really nice concert hall and like the opening like the entrance to the building in the venue going through more music related projects some of the favorite works that I've done I guess like we are here brownswood records it was great because it was like a compilation album featuring so many amazing like artists coming out from london and also the main kind of point of that project was to like show off like london.

9:21 But it was quite difficult to have every artist included on the photo on the actual cover so we thought maybe like a fox fox would kind of represent london ♪

9:38 moving on.

9:40 So this is like a collaboration that I've been working on for like last two like four or five years now nicholas daly he's a menswear designer based in london and these posters were designed for his he was like london fashion week presentations and all the artworks were kind of like used like from sort of photos that were like taken from the artist but also the presentation was really interesting because that all the like artists were wearing his clothes and they were all performing so he's quite a very organic kind of way of like showing off his like collection as well but working with nick I've also like done loads of like typography work and also design loads of like assets and like little little details that you can use on clothing for him and one of the projects that I worked on with him was like heavily inspired by like african-american like martial artists in like the 1970s and 80s in the u.s and so these were some of the like images that we kind of researched and looked at from like different I don't know like types and lots of like maybe like martial arts center and movies as well and these were some of the kind of drawings and like typography that we came up with which were kind of nice because it was quite cool to just like draw types but also like look into actual like little hand movements what the people use when they're like like playing karate or something I don't know and moving on this was another like ♪

11:44 project which is quite similar but this is kind of like inspired by peter tosh one of like band members in bob marley's band and he was actually called a stepping razor because he was really into martial arts as well and the whole collection was inspired like the name came off from that and a lot of these sort of assets were used along with like nick's promotional images and like onto lots of clothing and everything that like everything that was like kind of used like kind of taken from it I've also had the opportunity to like work on short animations with nick which I had like never really do that much.

12:28 But it's this is just like taken out from kind of using like 2d animation for his promotion for the last collection ♪

13:04 yeah that was it and but the music was scored by dennis bovell I don't know if you guys know him but great eyes and this is the last piece that I worked on. But also I've got lots of new projects lined up and there's more to come. So if you follow me on social media and stuff you can kind of check out what I'm up to thank you all for listening to me and thanks like that for having me yeah