Words: Julie Davis
Welcome to James Blagden’s world, where fluorescent, 99-cent character masks gaze upon their master as he brews up smoothies in the kitchen of his sunny Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn, apartment, which doubles as his studio. James, a 25-year-old Denver, Colorado, native, came to New York after high school to study illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and has stuck around ever since.
As a professional illustrator, his clients include King, The New York Times and MTV. Most of his work is done for print, but James grew up admiring skateboards, posters and records. “I think my generation is under a huge graphic design influence because of all the product we’ve ingested,” explains James. He’s adamant about the fact that anything you can put a drawing on, he’s down for. Hence his t-shirt graphics for No Mas, the dope posters he’s illustrated for the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival since it’s inception in 2005 and the awe-inspiring cornucopia of flyer designs he’s created—all of which can be viewed on his stylized, rollover-laden website, jamesblagden.com.
In this technological age, James is a rarity, doing his intricate drawings by hand. His tools are simple. Acrylic ink, nibs and the occasional use of a paintbrush to fill in larger spaces. Dope in print, and even more impressive to the naked eye, his work is a perfect balance between loose creativity and painstaking detail. “I try to have fun with it so I’m not bored. If you look at a lot of contemporary illustration, they only use like three colors and most of it is really thought out and planned,” says James. “I like my shit to look kind of off—that’s what I think is funny.” There are millions of colors out there and James has a keen knack for utilizing them with mucho creativity. Through James’ distorted illustrational lens, Cash Money Millionaires become red and the Brooklyn Bridge blue.
His father, a New York native, was a big Heavy Metal comic fan and got James into comics and Marvel trading cards at an early age. Drawing inspiration from his Superhero-saturated psyche, one of his favorite things to draw is people and their different poses. “The weirder the pose, the more real it looks. Because little intricacies of things, like, how a hand is held, you can’t fake that. That’s that little bing that I see that makes me go, Oh shit! I gotta catch that.” Sometimes for visual reference he’ll take photos of himself and friends doing random stuff. James himself has appeared as a Ninja Turtle and “Black Man” incarnate within his own illustrations. Other times, he stalks New York’s nightlife for subjects. So don’t be surprised if after some drunken night of debauchery, you vaguely recognize yourself on a poster, illustrated in purple and green.
