This week’s artist’s spotlight is on @hamburger_jack

1. Tell me a little about yourself.

“Hey there, my name is Jack Poole. I am an artist living and working in Brighton, a neighborhood of Boston, MA. Most of my days I am working on illustrations, playing pickup basketball, digging through thrift stores, or serving at a local restaurant. My illustration work mostly focuses on creating album covers for bands and musicians.”

2. What has inspire you lately in making your art and why?

“When looking for inspiration for either album covers or character designs I look to my pile of art books and start pulling certain bits I like to incorporate. Books, with bugs, old appliances, weapons and armor. Mixing and contrasting those ideas brings the beginning of a piece and can also fill in the empty spaces when completing the work.”

3. What three cartoons had made an impact on your art on why? 

“Cartoons have had a huge contribution to my art and my general interests since I can remember. A few of my favorites are not only fun and comforting to watch, but have art and artists that have influenced me tremendously. I’d narrow down that specific category to these three shows: Adventure Time, Dragon Ball, and The Simpsons. I’ve been watching The Simpsons the longest of the three and have probably tried to draw Bart
more than anything else. The character designs with their specific proportions, the iconic underbite, color choices, outfits, are all so perfect and in commercial animation, can’t be beat.

Dragon Ball has had a similar influence in terms of character design. Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball creator and illustrator, is one of my favorite manga artists and total master. He is able to so clearly draw fast, intense action and unlike The Simpsons, I
look to his designs for more realistic hands, poses, clothing details and facial expressions. He has also done the work for video game series Dragon Quest, which combines his own style with fantasy elements. Truthfully, I’ve never played the games, but I spend a lot of time with the artwork. Finally, the show that has had the largest impact on my current work and passion would be Adventure Time. I do love the characters themselves, but I had always been drawn to the background designs. For practice I would pause episodes and redraw background layouts. Long story short and a
fast forward a few years, I took part in an online course taught by the background designer of the show, and artist by the name of Ghostshrimp. He taught me a bunch of juicy illustration secrets that I keep in mind with everything I design nowadays.”

4.  What has been the most popular pieces of art you have sold or most requested character to create and why do you think it’s so popular?

My most popular piece would have to be an album cover I did for a group called DUNES.
Their second ep, Verbal Cabbage, came out last year and I really went all in on the cover and really felt a level up in my art and skills. I combined everything I love to draw including a demon erupting from a rift in the earth, a sweaty Boston Red Sox fan, some juicy meatloaf and the people have had a positive response. It helps that the music rocks too.”

5. Do you have any exciting events or news you would like to share?

“Recently DUNES released their third music project: Impala. I did the artwork for the cover and would say it’s their best work yet so I encourage everyone to check that out.
Besides that I do giveaways on @hamburger_jack and have prints for sale on my website: https://www.jackpooleart.com/”

Thank you so much for the interview!!!

Until next time!