Hackney based artist Richard Kilroy has just released his new zine Sketches IV, that we love!!

We caught up with Richard to find out more about his work process and the zine.

Do you sketch from live subjects?
I often work with guys who pose for me. Often I’ll take photos so I have lots to draw from. I can draw from life but it’s easier to capture a multitude of body shapes to work with over a period of time. 

It's a pretty even balance between working with a subject, source images and imagination.

Who is your favourite to collaborate with and draw? 

Two guys I've worked with are professional ballet dancers, able to manipulate and accentuate their bodies in ways nobody else can, without doing ballet style poses.

Has colour always been a key element to your work? 

The opposite. For 10 years I cornered myself into pencil realism which became my recognised style. In 2020 I was fully over it and of drawing photorealist portraits. I was given a brief by the Fashion Illustration Gallery to come up with work based on the theme 'yellow', and it just snowballed from there. The yellow silhouettes did look inadvertently like the Gigantic Asses magazine from The Simpsons, so now I avoid yellow figures due to that mental association.

Your limited edition sketches newsprint zines are incredible, and a great way for someone to start to buy your work, - what is it about the format you enjoy? 
Thanks! It's just easy, accessible, and slightly delicate so there's an instinct to be careful with it. It's always rewarding to see work printed largely. I've seen many use pages from older issues because of their scale, so it's a cheaper way to display large image, without being the same price or quality as an actual print.

What’s next for you and your work? 
I've got a backlog of guys I shot in Berlin during the summer to work through. There's a few collaborations and projects for 2025 in the pipeline but nothing has a date so I have to remain tight-lipped.

Going larger with the scale of my work and potentially with glassware is very much on my radar.