Blog Takeover: Jimmy Edgar On Creating His Art

The next artist to take over our blog is the musical connoisseur and Berlin resident, Jimmy Edgar. The focus of his feature is an object which correlates quite perfectly with Jimmy’s renowned passion for visual vernaculars, majestically melding music, art and visual installations into a seamless sensory experience through his co-conducted, electric portal, Ultramajic. A passion that lies close to his heart, read on to hear how Jimmy creates his enchanting artwork and illustrations for himself and for the multi-dimensional enterprise. The cintiq 22HD might be an unexpected choice for a DJ/Musician, but it’s been a pivotal instrument in Ultramajic artwork and my personal photography and illustrations. It is essentially a pen display that lets you operate Photoshop, or whichever art program you wish, in the same way you would with pen and paper. In addition, you have different brush settings, pressure, tilting, angling, and everything you would need to create. I approach my artwork and music the same way. My style is mostly influenced by 80's and 90's airbrush work, metaphysical book covers, mannequins, avant grade fashion, new age spirituality and rare science fiction. I do all of the covers with my design partner, Pilar Zeta, which does similar work. We have combined our styles to create something that calls for “mystical, fun and fashion.” We try and keep it light-hearted since we both love dark and mysterious art works. We want people to feel strange and new feelings when they see our work, like they are looking at something forbidden, lost or secret. A typical piece by us goes through many stages, normally starting with an idea flower. You choose one word and then start expanding to find more ideas. Then we have some basic idea of the objects and symbolism. The next step is normally finding the perfect geometry, symmetry/asymmetry; we find an interesting layout with guidelines. Throughout this process we are going through just about every application and taking notes, doing tons of research. Then we go into colours and we always work zoomed out and details come later when we have really found a balance between the symbolism of the piece, colour, layout, arrangement; this is very close to the process I use for making music. As you can see, with persistence and focus, a finished piece can contain some kind of “perfected” style that has a subtle message.