Interview
Joel Meadows chats with the artist about his creative formula, comparing comics to cinema, and doubling as an author
Best known for his work on Wonder Woman, Batman: The Brave And The Bold, and The Green Lantern for DC in recent years, British artist, painter and author Liam Sharp has been able to carve himself out a unique niche as a comic illustrator with a distinctly idiosyncratic feel.
Ahead of this year’s launch of the Spawn: The Dark Ages series that he’s writing, drawing and colouring, we caught up with Liam to find out a little more about his art, process and career to date.
Your work schedule has evolved since your earlier days as a professional. What has shaped this change in work patterns?
When I was younger I used to be a bit more cavalier with my working days, and I’d have four days, for example, when I’d go bonkers. I’d find that naturally my days would be about 26 hours long, so they’d always get a little bit later every day that I was left alone with my work.
But then what would happen is that you’d have these massive bursts of inspiration and working your socks off for a number of days, then you’d
OPENING THE TOY BOX
Liam’s work on DC’s The Green Lantern saw him playing in the company’s cosmic toy box.
It was weird as I think it was having kids and the whole school time that changed my working habits. Family life just tends to get more important. I tend to rebel against anything that’s a little militaristic or pinned down. I think a natural state of artists is to push against things like that.
But I did find that having the discipline of children and getting up and doing school runs really focused me. So what I slowly discovered was that, provided I did some work every day, I could keep it going. If I didn’t burn myself out and I didn’t work too late, then I could run for much longer periods of time in a state of creativity or successful creativity. What the days look like has changed again recently as the kids have all flown the nest now, so once again I’m back to a slightly later start each day.
You like to start you
