This year’s Tracks t-shirt features the artwork of Johannes Leak. You may have seen Johannes’s work in Tracks, or on Tracks instagram where his illustrated posts regularly celebrate surfing from a more lateral, irreverent and humorous perspective. For this year’s annual t-shirt Johannes opted for something a little more classic and minimalist. Below he discusses his stylistic approach to the t-shirt, Kelly Slater’s response to his illustrations and why he’d love to do caricatured shirts with the WSL commentary team as the Wiggles.
What was your inspiration for this year’s Tracks t-shirt.
I was going for that look that you get when a photo has been degraded to the point that it's reduced just to shapes and semi abstract-marks.
In artistic terms how would you describe the style?
Smudge Art.
Do you actually check out a lot of t-shirt art in your travels? Is the t-shirt a powerful canvas in its own right.
Yeah, I suppose I do. And when I look at my t-shirts most of them have something on them. I must be drawn to the way they can sort of carry a statement and attract attention. Band shirts are a good example.
When Kolohe Andino was called out on live TV by Danny Clayton for chatting up his girlfriend you drew a sketch and made up a limited run of shirts. Did one ever make it to Kolohe?
Not sure if one ever made it to him but he liked my work.
When Mick was last chasing the title you created the Mad Mick print. Was it a lot of fun coming up with the concept?
Definitely, once I hit on the Mad Max theme it sort of fell into place.
You seem to enjoy the concept as much as the art itself?
Yep, once you come up with something that has legs and makes sense in a visually funny way then you focus on the drawing and it usually comes together. I like to refer to pop-culture stuff – movie posters, rock and pop-music imagery, comics, so I'll steal anything I can that ties in with whatever or whoever it is I have to draw.
We actually gave Mick one of those. Was it flattering to see him accept one?
Yeah, I was stoked!
In terms of the process, how long does it take you to get an illustration right?
It varies but it always comes down to the deadline. If I know I have time I'll sort of wait until a good idea comes to me, that can be over a period of days while I'm doing other work, but once the deadline gets closer though you have to settle on something and get cracking. The drawing component usually takes a day or two.
If someone offered you an unlimited print run would you like to work on more pro surfing subjects? Who/What
Definitely, surfing and surfing characters are loads of fun to work with. First thing that comes to mind would be something to do with some of the iconic surfers of the recent and not-so recent past.
Do you ever worry that the surfers will react negatively to the way they are portrayed in your artwork?
I wouldn't say I worry about it, but I get a bit of a giggle out of thinking about it, sometimes. Often they like them, even the ones that aren't the most flattering. Sometimes they don't, like Filipe who blocked me on Instagram.
Do you ever get comments from the surfers on your illustrations when you post them on instagram?
Yeah, pretty often actually. Kelly has commented on quite a few, MR too. Tom Carroll, RCJ, Adriano… I know the WSL commentators do too. And Rosy has left the odd nice comment, which at the end of the day is all that really matters.
If given a chance to customize a shirt for the WSL commentary team what would you draw? Would they be brave enough to rock their own caricature on a shirt?
I'd love to, I drew four of them a while back as The Wiggles, something about that worked. I reckon most of them would be brave enough, I know Joe, Strider, Pete and Rosy can take a joke. I'm kind of scared of Pottz though.
For more work by Johannes Leak check out
@johannesleak on Instagram and hannesleak.blogspot.
For more work by Johannes Leak check out
@johannesleak on Instagram and johannesleak.com
