Dave McKean, illustrator and cover artist: "I want to express feelings and emotions accurately"

Every artist is different. In general, they are known as special people in many aspects, both personal and professional, but it is always interesting to know what is in their minds in order to better understand their work. In addition to this, Dave McKean has confessed to us that one of his loves, apart from drawing, is music. We talked with him at the 25th Naples Comicon, where he shared his working method to achieve his characteristic style, among other topics.

The British author is known for varying techniques, sometimes doing a kind of collage or using photographs. "To tell stories you have to understand how people move, how individuals speak and express themselves, to better connect with the story. I don't want a busy illustrative technique, I want something that expresses those feelings and emotions accurately so you can move through the page smoothly and start to feel those people talking and moving."

His process starts for a few days trying to find the right tone. "Normally, it all goes in the bin and it's horrible, but slowly those characters become simple ink drawings." Talking about the work behind Raptor: A Sokol Graphic Novel, he comments on what his process has been like. " The text demands an approach so actually I ended up with the real-world story in quite a scratchy pencil style often ready as if I'm sort of catching people on the fly. The fantastical story is much more designed and has a very specific pen and ink look to it, an expressionistic way of drawing. There are a couple of other styles in there but I try to have the styles very closely linked with the ideas and emotions."

In addition, McKean also discusses his experience as a music illustrator, illustrating album covers. "Well music is my first love really. I play music as well. It's abstract and it's emotional and I can perfectly happily spend a day even with music that I wouldn't normally listen to. You get an emotional reaction to it and I get to try and express that in some way and find an image to reflect that".

• Dave McKean has been the cover artist of choice for bands such as Delerium, My Dying Bride, Believer, Paradise Lost, Frontline Assembly, and others.

For more details from our chat, in which we discussed some very interesting topics with Dave, please find below the full interview with local subtitles.