RAD DAN

Twenty minutes with the despairingly dynamic artist we’ve featured in the current issue.

Grapevine: Who are you really, Rad Dan?

Rad: My real name is Daniel Watkins, most people know me as Rad Dan.

Grapevine: Where did ‘Rad’ come from and would you consider yourself ‘Rad’?

Rad: (laughs) I would not have a clue. Nah… not one bit.

Grapevine: I can smell your brushed teeth, dude.

Rad: Rad teeth.

Grapevine: What was your first experience with art? I mean like, when did you start getting involved in that creative process of making something entirely your own?


Rad: First time I made something my own… I’ve always been heaps into it. I guess you start off doing stuff and you’re unaware that you’re doing it. I used to like, draw maps of my house and stuff when I was really young like, six or something. I used to draw all these cool images that I wished were part of the house, like monsters under the house and all this stuff. Like blueprints. I guess that’s where I started, trying to make my house better.

Grapevine: Any aspirations to become an architect then?

Rad: Nah. I moved on from that and started drawing on walls.

Grapevine: The first time I heard of you was after I spotted the local groms with some interesting art slapped on the bottom of their surfboards. Was that the starting point for you in getting your name out there?

Rad: Yeah I guess… I was always doing stuff on my own boards and then I had a few dudes asking me to do their boards so I did some of those and then I ended up at Hayden Shapes spraying boards fulltime. It ended up people were asking me to do their board graphics and I was loving it like ‘fuck yeah’.



Grapevine: So you’re working for Insight now. What’s your job title?

Rad: Shit-kicker (laughs). Nah I’ve got a job as Marketing Designer. I work a lot helping with ads, a couple of Tee prints and stuff. Hopefully moving in the direction of more art related stuff, Tees and installations. I’ve got a Tee design coming out in the next range, Summer or something.

Grapevine: Can you give us any sneaky hints on your design?

Rad: It’s collage style. Like the stuff you’ve seen. Kind of a collage but I got heaps into doing images, sort’ve surrealist style, and I was into all those 50’s style images of women with the full hourglass figures. I was morphing the images and adding industrial elements like pipes for heads, anchors for legs.

Grapevine: Your art works on a lot of different mediums. How would you describe your style?

Rad: I have a really short attention span. I can’t stick with the one thing for too long or I get really, really bored. So I move onto something else pretty quickly or I get bored with my own art. I’m always doing illustrations, I love painting and drawing, but then I’ll have to add bits or mix things into whatever I’m doing to keep me excited.


Grapevine: Is there any particular band or style of music you listen to when your painting or drawing or whatevs?

Rad: Yeah, you go through a lot of different music but the thing I keep coming back to is Jazz instrumental stuff. I can’t get enough of Miles Davis, that sort of thing. I used to think like, ‘why would anyone want to listen to a douche playing a trumpet?’ but then I got into it and now I’m like, fuck yeah!

Grapevine: Your installations, prints, board graphics, paintings and everything else you do seem to carry this friendly meets industrial, cartoonish vibe. Is this a theme you are conscious of when designing or is it just a product of your twisted subconscious?

Rad: Yeah… It’s just the way things turn out. I guess some shit you just can’t escape. Your mind runs too fast. I start off drawing something and thinking ‘oh yeah this looks cool’ then the next thing I’ve got layers going on and there’s another one of those thing looking up, and then I get bored and add more and then there’s 400 layers put together. A big pile of shit. It just turns out however, really.

Grapevine: How do you know when to stop, if a piece is made of multiple layers? Do you have a definite idea or do you have to tell yourself to settle down and leave it?

Rad: Yeah, I gotta give myself a slap on the wrist sometimes. I have done a couple of things that should’ve been more simplistic. But I don’t know when to stop. When I run out of room, I guess.

Grapevine: We’re loving the cover you did for us, that shit is unique, to say the least. Is that layered look the kind of vibe you went with when you designing it?

Rad: I was just trying to get some of that shit out of my head… when I was doing the cover I thought about the mag, and it’s got a bit of everything in there, I do a bit of everything, so I put a bunch of shit on my kitchen bench and took a picture of it.

Grapevine: Have you got a favourite material you like working with?

Rad: The thing I use the most is a black, felt tip pen. I probably use one 90% of my day. I couldn’t really get by without one, I use them for everything except you can’t really colour in huge blocks of space with them. I spend a lot of time on the bus getting to and from work, so I use whatever is portable, and I learned to love the little 0.5 black pen.

Grapevine: What is the ‘Bogus Book of Radicals’?

Rad: That was a little book I made about six months ago, I’d just finished my course and had a lot of spare time and I wanted to see if I could make a proper book. I made this bound booklet of radicals. It’s pretty much is what it is – a book full of radical shit.

Grapevine: Enough of the relevant questions. I want to ask you some shorter questions that require less brain power. Firstly, what are you going to do to our office wall? You’ve got free reign on that thing.

Rad: It’s gunna be pretty sick. I’m thinking….. a big, giant dick? Nah – a bit of paint, a bit of….

Grapevine: Actually I don’t want to know. I wanna just walk in and see it. Now, you were unaware of the Boosh until we told you about it.

Rad: (nodding) Fuck me! Yeah!

Grapevine: Who is your favourite Boosh character?

Rad: I like the moon.

Grapevine: Everyone likes the moon. I hate the fucking moon, except when he calls himself a vanilla rapist.

Rad: (laughing) Yeah. If I had to pick someone else, probably Bob Fossil.

Grapevine: Do you use Myspace or Facebook?

Rad: Yeah I use a bit of both, and I’ve been put onto this other one called Verg (I had trouble hearing this on the dicataphone, maybe I’ve misspelt it – venes) some dude told me to use it, to use his site. It’s pretty sick.

Grapevine: Any plans to travel, to see the world abroad?

Rad: Fuck yeah. The place I wanna go to is Japan. I just want to go to their Disneyland and hear Mickey Mouse say something in Japanese.

Grapevine: That’s a recurring character in your drawings, isn’t it? The mouse?

Rad: Yeah. Lately I’ve been using the Cat In The Hat and the Monopoly Man. They’re really fun to draw.

Grapevine: Does surfing have an influence on your art?

Rad: I have dabbled with doing the odd surf image. I loved Mambo, I used to draw that stuff all the time. Copying that shit was fun, those images were funny. I’d love to get Reg Mombassa in a room and get him to show me how he does that like, that sick airbrush/paintbrush style. I’d pull out that part of his brain and keep it.

Grapevine: A few people consider your art very similar to that whole Ksubi/Ozzie/mess thing that was going on a few years back, what response would you give to those who say you’re steez-biting?

Rad: Don’t look at it (laughing). Yeah you can get that a bit, there’s so much shit out there and you can draw something and not even realise that it might be a bit like something else. I guess you eventually move into your own area, keep doing what you’re doing and one day people will be saying ‘oh yeah, you’re copying Rad Dan’.

Grapevine: If you were me, sitting here interviewing you, what question would you ask yourself?


Rad: Why did you brush your teeth before coming here? Now you can’t have a beer.