Kid Ontology Sings The Blues

Mr Bowlegs is Jeffrey Bowman, a 23 year old UK-based illustrator and designer. His commercial clients include Nike, the BBC, Converse, and many others. On the racks, you can find his art in places like Computer Arts and Vice Magazine. Bowman’s art is admirable in its ability to appear free-flowing, psychedelic, and playful, while cultivating an almost OCD knack for complexity and completeness. Witness how he fills up every inch of a page, inching his delirious, curvy, smiling cartoons until they threaten to flow right off it. Along with collaborator and good friend Andy J. Miller, he started the art zine The Wizard’s Hat. A nifty little treasure, now its second issue, it features art by Gemma Correl, Will Bryant, and others. Miller and Bowman have also included a CD with their friend’s music on it, apt for people looking for more bang for their buck in these bleak and dreary magazine dark ages. Here’s some stuff he had to say about different stuff.

You’re currently based in Nottingham, correct? What is the design and art scene like there? Is there a larger UK art community to which you feel connected?

I am. I’ve been here nearly a year. I’m sort of new to the art scene here, but I’ve started getting more involved. This weekend coming I’m taking part in a screen-printing night along with some of the other local people, so I’ll get to meet more of the “locals”. Jon Burgerman is also Nottingham’s art scene in his own right; I go down to visit his studio every now and then and eat lunch with him and talk about the usual stuff (work). Which is cool, Jon is Rad! As for a larger community in the UK, I don’t feel strongly connected to one as there is so much going on in different places. I just am glad I’m doing work and being able to dip in and out of it all.

What was the genesis of “The Wizard’s Hat”, your zine with Andrew Miller? How much of your motivation has to do with community? What kind of connections have you developed as a result of The Wizard’s Hat, that you hadn’t before?

Well it’s quite a simple thing: it evolved from building up a love of the same things as Andy from work to illustrators to the same music and then just saying, “hey, let’s make a zine”, as we had been making work together for a while and wanted to document it, and we always want to do a publication. We have always had the focus with it to create something that we would buy ourselves, which meant we wanted our favorite illustrators in it. We’ve made quite good connections, especially with Gemma Correll and Will Bryant and we have opened the door with many others now, I guess we feel we have started a little community, it’s good.


With the magazine industry imploding–is this a good time or a bad time to be self-publishing zines? Do you feel like the world will be seeing an increase in community-based self-publishing like this?

I guess so, but zines have been around for many years. It’s a nice way to document something quickly without the pressures of money issues, production issues, sales etc. I think it’s the most accessible way to make a publication off your own back, and they seem to be springing up every day now. They’re serious business, so I think they will continue to evolve and increase in numbers.

You do design work for a variety of clients, what’s the importance in finding space for your own work without commercial concerns, a space to just “play”? Is it hard to find time and energy for this kind of personal work?

One feeds the other for me. I have to try to keep a steady flow of both client-based and personal work going. Both give me an opportunity to try new things and develop. I think as well, my personal work is continually happening, I’m always thinking of new ideas and I’m always drawing. It’s good to be able to bring new bits into a client project, and also take them away and develop them in the “play” time!

I’m surprised how young you are. How old were you when you first started doing commercial work?

I think my first piece of proper commercial work was when i was 19. I did some album artwork for a band called Divide, they made it quite big in the alternative metal/indie scene but now they’re long gone. The internet has helped massively for younger illustrators to get this stuff seen which in turn has made it so that younger people are picking up more commercial work and also people like YCN who are commissioning students to work for quite big clients like Nike, Topshop, Sony.

Do you see your formal education as having been very helpful in developing your art?

Yes and no. I studied graphic design at University then somehow have found my way into illustration. It has helped in places with my process and thinking, but in other ways its hindered it in exactly the same way. I’ve always perused art from a young age right throughout school. What seemed like irrelevant lessons in life-drawing and things have somehow found their way back into my thought process and practice now.

When doing work for large, corporate clients like Converse, how do you negotiate your personal brand as Mr. Bowlegs with the larger brand that you’re working under? In other words, do you have to limit how personalized this work can be when it has to fit into the larger Converse (for example) narrative?

Well for the Converse project, they came to me for what I do for Mr Bowlegs, but there have been other clients where I have had to make less of a mark. The way I view it is, sometimes a client will buy into everything you do and what you’re about, like, really appreciate it want you for you, and others will see you for your skill set rather than your style. Obviously you can still make it your own, but there is a lot more guidance, editing, and amends that sometimes take it away from being a very “Jeffrey Bowman” piece of work to something a lot more client focused, and that they’re happy with. Ultimately that is how it works, and I really enjoy both sides of it. It’s a challenge!

How has the global shit-economy been affecting you professionally? How have you been so resilient?

I’m not sure how this has happened but I’ve never been busier and I’ve never worked for so many people I’ve always wanted to work for at one time. It’s crazy. I don’t count my chickens by any means. I’m super tight with cash at the moment, it’s the only way to be with or without the current state of the economic world. It’s beyond me how this economic crash has happened or even been allowed to happen, and it makes me really sad at how its affected a lot of people. It’s not fair.

There is a sense of magic and playfulness to your illustrations. Where do you think that comes from? Are you surprised that this style has proved so marketable?

It comes from my obsession with wanting to know the facts and trying to understand the universe. It’s like a reaction to trying to understand it, so my work is more playful and more magical, ironically, because all I want to know are the facts and how the world, space, life, works. I’m not sure really if I am surprised or not as I’ve never tried to do work for that purpose. It does make me feel like it’s all worth it though, that the long days and late nights, doubt and sacrifice is worth every second of it. I love what I’m doing, it’s my life, and if people are into it and want to see more, then that’s incredible. But if they don’t, it’s going to be there anyway!