Nick Gentry:
I think inspiration can be anything. It can come from anywhere. Often it's the everyday, sort of mundane stuff that could actually be really inspiring, because it's all so surprising, what you can do with it. It's just a question of, you know, knowing what to look for.
I think it's vital to get out of the studio from time to time. Um… it just kind of creates a different mood. It's usually quite easy to zone out from everything all around you so it almost doesn't matter how much noise and things that are going on all around you… It's all about kind of the connection between the sketchbook and what's going on with your ideas.
Leonardo da Vinci is a real inspiration to me because beyond his paintings and drawings, he was also a scientist. He used to dissect, you know, animals and even people to find out what was going on inside us. So I take a lot of different inspiration from different artists. But I think it goes way beyond just looking at art.
I'm naturally inclined to sort of go for these sort of angular faces and you end up creating these sort of android-type looking things. You look at faces all the time and it's the way you learn about the world and the faces that we have are also a bit of a story about the lives we've lived.
It's vital, really, for me to actually have this to get my ideas down into this book, because without this, there's nothing, there's just a piece of imagination. Some of the writing is so hurriedly written, it's almost like I'm panicking, you know. Writing this stuff down and getting it out as quickly as possible because, you know, if I slow down, then the idea could go.
It's all about keeping this momentum, this flow and that's all the way through my work, even in the studio, I have to work with the flow of things and I think it's just the act of writing it, and jotting it down, embeds it in your memory. Just getting them down into the book just solidifies the idea. They're the seeds, really, of the work and you need those in order to progress.
Video summary
Artist Nick Gentry visits his local café to look for inspiration for new pieces.
He talks about how mundane things can inspire people and explains how he is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci because he wasn’t just an artist, but a scientist too.
Images of anatomical drawings are shown as he describes how Leonardo tried to find out what was going on inside us beneath the surface. Nick jots down ideas in his sketchbook and shows us images of his notes and drawings.
This clip is from Making Art Work, a BBC 2 Learning Zone compilation of short films following six UK-based leading artists as they create new artwork from scratch.
Teacher Notes
This clip could be used to demonstrate how artists record ideas, make notes, annotations and rough drawings in a sketchbook at the start of the creative process. Encourage the students to take inspiration from Nick and find somewhere they could look for ideas.
These clips will be relevant for teaching Art and Design at GCSE/KS4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and National 4/5 or Higher in Scotland.
The topics discussed will support OCR, Edexcel, AQA, WJEC GCSE in England and Wales, CCEA GCSE in Northern Ireland and SQA National 4/5 and Higher in Scotland.
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