Beauty in the details

About the artist

Zack grew up in the countryside of the UK where he found a fascination and love for nature at a young age. This love fed into his obsession with art and drawing, if not outside in the fields, you’d find him in his room with paint brush or pen in hand.

After a school education mainly lead by his love of drawing Zack went on to study art at college before heading to University and graduating in Illustration. Children’s books was where Zack was drawn to, and he spent many years illustrating for them, loving the freedom and imagination involved.

When working on his own Children’s book, in which a little boy is held captive by a monster, he creates his own paper bird lantern on which to escape. After many attempts, Zack just couldn’t make the lantern look right in his paintings… so he went about making one to draw from.

Using Pages of an old book and willow sticks, Zack started creating what was in his head. Having never done anything like this before, it took a while to teach himself, but after three months on and off Zack had created his very own paper bird lantern. And he fell in love.

Zack fell in love with the processes involved, the way he could look at his creation from any angle as well as the way light and shadow played with the form, pure fascination. Instantly, Zack’s imagination, obsession with detail and love for the natural world took over and he went on to challenge himself to create more and more realistic sculptures of birds.

This is where Zack’s creativity really took flight.

Processes

Whatever Zack makes, he wants to make it as detailed and close to nature as he can, so he will research the subject thoroughly. Whether from his own photos, books or online, Zack will get as many angles and details he can, enabling him to get a full understanding of what he is about to make.

Next Zack will create full blueprint style drawings, dismantling the subject and getting all the shapes and sizes just right, before he then builds it back up from the page.

When Zack first started creating his sculptures, he wanted them to last the test of time, so a firm skeleton to the sculpture was needed. Whether it is hand carved wood or a wire skeleton structure, the underlying shape of the sculpture is formed by hand, this is then the base for everything else to lay on top.

On most occasions Zack will use glass eyes and then sculpt details like eyelids, feet, beaks etc out of clay. From here it is all down to hand cutting LOTS of paper.

Zack came across his love of paper by accident, just by playing with scissors to see what textures he could create, he still plays now, testing the limits of what you can do with a sheet of paper.

Whether it’s feathers, scales or fur Zack hand cuts hundreds or even thousands per creation. Cutting out the shape itself before feathering each edge and then layering them up on the skeleton of the sculpture.

Once fully papered, Zack will bring the whole piece to life with his trusty paintbrush and acrylic paints, adding all those beautiful colours and details nature creates so effortlessly.

Nature always does it better, but Zack is okay with that, but he always says, “Nature deserves attention to detail.”

Inspiration

Zack is solely inspired by the natural world. Wherever he is he can’t help but be distracted by a bird singing, or an insect on a flower, his childlike sense of awe for nature just takes over. This means Zack really looks at whatever has caught his eye, taking in all the details and beauty, mentally snapping them and then constantly thinking about how he can bring them into his work.

As often as he can, Zack will go for long walks out in his local parks, woodlands or wetlands, armed with a camera and binoculars, just gathering as much inspiration as he can. This passion has lead Zack to get into wildlife photography too, you can find some of his snapshots of nature here @zackinthewild