Chances are you’re already familiar with John Engelhardt’s work. When we say he’s multi-award winning, we mean it for serious – he’s even been nominated for an Aria for his work on the Hilltop Hoods’ album covers. But John’s work goes much, much deeper than just his Hoods’ stuff – he’s worked for Walt Disney, on tattoos, wine labels, and children’s puzzles; plus he’s even drawn the odd cheeky toilet training video. The only question is: Is there anything John Engelhardt can’t do?

You mentioned on your blog that you’d worked for Walt Disney and Dean Taylor [Nightmare before Christmas].
I undertook a trainee ship with Walt Disney Australia which was a massive learning curve, but had some prior knowledge with 2D animation, so that helped.

It was good to work with Dean. He became a bit of a mentor in a way, I was lucky to work with him. I learnt so much about creating mood and building worlds for characters and characters themselves – production design, and background design and stuff like that.

Tell me about the Disney thing.
I just went there from studying. I studied graphic design, and someone sent me an email saying [Disney] was looking for people. And I ended up doing a traineeship over in Sydney for 6 months. It was a good learning curve, but they don’t pay too well.

No? Well, it’s more the honour.

 

What’s your preferred medium?
I really like working on single images now. Just sinking a lot of time into one thing, just getting in the zone with that – instead of being one cog in a bigger picture or project. Sort of just doing one thing. But I still love doing backgrounds and set design.

And what do you like to work in?
90% of the time I’m on the computer. But I’m enjoying getting back to paint recently. I want to do a few more exhibitions that are just hand drawn. I like to use biro a lot for some reason.

Biro, ay? Yeah, you have a lot of fun with it, but it takes ages. You can get that really nice shading and intricate patterns! Detail does rule, in my opinion, It’s what spins my wheels at the mo.

When did you start deciding to take your art seriously?
I’ve always taken it fairly seriously, since I can remember. Straight out of school, I did visual arts and then graphic design, and I liked to do it so I just sort of kept going. I’ve been freelance for about eight years professionally now I suppose.

I did graphic design because I thought that’d be a safer bet. From there, I branched out into illustration and I was quite surprised – there is a market for it.

It can be done. Yeah, it can be done. But it’s not easy, I wouldn’t recommended it as an easy way to go.

 

Which artists do you respect?
Well I’m more into genres rather than people. Different styles of influences, like art nouveau, Japanese wood carvings, tattoos – I just try and blend all my favourite gear Celtic art pattern heavy! Probably one of my favourite artists currently would be James Jean. Or Mike Giant, who’s a bit more of a street artist. Any of the low-brow artists.

Where would you like to take your art?
I suppose I have a feeling lately like I’m just getting started, I decided to really develop my own style do more to blend all of the influences in my subconscious. I’d like to be more of an exhibiting artist, instead of working on bigger productions. I want to see how far I can get with that, because it’s something that I haven’t focussed on for a long time. I want to do a solo show in the next few months.

And how about the Hoods stuff?
I’m doing some stuff for them right now. They’re doing two covers this time – and a single cover in this lot. 3 years in between albums so hopefully we are all developing as artists.

And then another Aria headed your way. That’d freak me out, I think. I couldn’t imagine going to the Arias.

You might get to shake Molly Meldrum’s hand or something.
I wouldn’t be breaking my neck to shake his hand, just quietly.

Finally: Where does the name Engelhardt come from?
It’s German. It means “angel heart”.

Well alright.