We sat down with UK based artist, Psychrome after he dropped his second remx collection, Lambo Graveyard. The name is a composite of antonyms: success and failure. “Lambo” is a term used in Web3 to denote success while “Graveyard”, is the ultimate failure. His experience in this space has been as volatile as the crypto currency swings and his lifelong work as an artist is one to watch. Explore the rest of this talented illustrator and artist in the conversation and video below. View the Lambo Graveyard collection here.
remx: Hi, thank you so much for meeting us. We’re really excited to have you. You have been one of the key players in remx since the very beginning. And we’re just really stoked to be able to kind of sit down and have a chat with you.
What does the web3 landscape look like in the UK? Do you find that your web3 community is more digital or are there still IRL events? I know that NFT London was happening. Did you get to go and participate in any of that?
Psychrome: Yeah, I did see that was going on, but no, I haven’t actually been to any NFT events yet. I kind of think it’s weird nowadays because it doesn’t really matter where you are. I live in Bristol, UK which is the west side of the UK. But most of my work is with SneakerCon and they’re in New York.
So it’s kind of funny that I live in the UK but really I work in New York; I deal with those guys like every day. It’s kind of interesting how the internet has made the world smaller in that respect. I don’t think it really matters where you are.
Some people really like the countryside whereas some people really like the cities. So it’s kind of interesting that if you’re a real country kind of person you can still get out there as long as you’ve got a good internet connection you can just still get involved with stuff.
remx: Yeah I know it’s kind of beautiful that the NFT Space has been able to create opportunities for so many individuals who don’t necessarily live in a city. How did SneakerCon… Well how did that whole thing happen? A lot of people probably do recognize you. Were you always a sneakerhead? How did that opportunity arise?
Psychrome: Yeah, so I wasn’t really a sneakerhead when I was younger. My family was kind of traditionally poor so there was no way that we would ever get expensive sneakers when we were kids. We had to have cheap sneakers from the market but it’s all good, I was fine with that. But as I got older and I had my own money, earning my own money then I could obviously justify what I was buying a bit more.
When I started working with SneakerCon, I wanted to embrace the culture a bit more because if you’re doing work in that area, it’s good to find out about it and immerse yourself in it. It came about because I used to just do loads of different artwork and whatever I did, I would put it online or do animations, make characters, make and animate them, put them online.
And I think one of the guys [from SneakerCon], their girlfriend at the time, was into animation. I think she had an animation blog and so she kind of knew of my stuff just from finding it online. And then when they needed somebody for the artwork, she suggested my name to them and they just sent me an email, which was 2012 now, so it’s like 10 years ago.
remx: Oh my goodness.
Psychrome: Yeah it was this random email saying it was from SneakerCon and that it’s a buy, sell, and trade event. And SneakerCon was quite small then, you know, not as big as what it is now, it’s grown a lot over the years. Just an email came in, but I thought, oh yeah, this sounds cool. I did one flyer design with them and then we did the next event and the next event and it just kept going and going.
remx: That’s such alignment.
Psychrome: It was cool. And I always used to do it alongside my day job at a 9–5 and then I’d come home and do sneaker stuff and only in the last couple of years, I quit my job to kind of focus on it. Actually, I quit my job right before the pandemic. So when the pandemic came and shut down SneakerCon, I was like fuck, because it’s funny because I had the day job and I was doing SneakerCon work at night and it just got too much to handle. I was working late all the time and then I went from having work all day and night to having no work….
remx: Wait so what were you doing before? What was your day job?
Psychrome: When SneakerCon first got in touch with me, I was doing website design. Everything else I did as a hobby. Animation and illustration kind of stuff. That’s what got me the SneakerCon work. But I was doing website design as a job, but then everything I did for SneakerCon, I put that online as well. And then I got offered a job at this design company, I went to work for them for a bit and they had some really big clients like Nickelodeon and Warner brothers, they would do Harry Potter stuff, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stuff.
It was cool but it was also great for me to test myself against all that stuff. I think I was there for like five years, and then after that, this SneakerCon work was so much, I just thought it’s now or never, I gotta quit, and then I did quit, and then the pandemic took down, luckily I managed to keep going.
remx: Yeah, well, I’m glad that relationship continued. So, a lot of your artwork is based around characters. What is the first illustration that you ever recall creating and what were the themes and characters in that?
Psychrome: Yeah, it’s funny actually, I found an image not so long ago in a family photo album of when we were decorating in our house, and my parents let me paint the wall. So I was with a paintbrush painting this wall and just in the top right there was a character that, I don’t know, like it’s got a different name in different countries, but I know it is Chad or Mr. Chad, I think it might be called Kilroy in other countries.
It’s basically the guy with the, with the big nose holding onto a wall and his nose and his hands are over the wall. So I used to love drawing that guy, Chad or Mr. Chad and actually, my mom kept some of my artwork and she gave me some and I did like different types of Chad. So I did a Robocop Chad and a Barbarian Chad and I think I even did a Michael Chadson, it’s a bit lame, but it’s kind of funny.
So yeah, that was a character. I definitely used to draw a lot when I was really young, so I don’t know. Yeah, I’ve always kind of liked characters. I’ve always loved cartoons, loved watching HeMan, Battle of the Planets…
remx: Would you say that there’s anything that inspired you to start drawing them or did it just come naturally to you?
Psychrome: I’ve always liked drawing. It was always a hobby of mine and I always used to paint Warhammer figures and stuff like that, you know? So I’ve always been into making stuff. Yeah, I don’t really know how it came about. I just used to do it as a hobby, I used to just have fun with it and put it online and then by putting it online, it kind of led to work.
I’ve just been doing that kind of stuff really. But yeah, I’ve always loved doing characters. I’ve always loved cartoons. Always loved bright colors and stuff like that.
remx: You can definitely see it in your work. Every image is little characters that all connect and come together.
Psychrome: Yeah, definitely. If I sit down with a blank page, I’m not going to draw a building, it just doesn’t do anything for me. But if I just start with faces I think and then I draw heads and I think oh, this guy’s cool… I’ll give him a body and then I’ll do multiple characters and join them together and just do weird stuff like that. Always been into characters for some reason.
remx: So you recently released the Lambo Graveyard Puffer collection on remx and you had mentioned before that all of your illustrations were vectorized, but the Lambo Graveyard collection was a little different. It was kind of stepping back to going back to the basics, this was all black and white for one and you had mentioned before, you did a lot of color and you’re not seeking out perfection. So do you see yourself exploring more work in that raw hand drawn style in the future or do you think you’ll always go back to vector?
Psychrome: Well, I really love vectors because they’re super versatile. You can then scale them and it’s not a problem. SneakerCon asked me to do something for Philadelphia and one of the things I drew was the Philly cheesesteak. They were kind of like, “Oh it needs to be longer.”
So instead of redrawing it, with vectors, you can just stretch it out but the line weight of the lines you don’t stretch because you can keep them the same thickness and stuff. You can change the thickness, you can easily outline them. You can select by colors. So I can make like three different pieces of art all with different colors but then one character I could take out, drop it into another piece of art, easily select, and change the colors and the quality is always completely crisp. That is why I really love vectors. But having said that, it does take time to make them. It’s a lot of screen time. I do some vectorization on the iPad but then I’ve always got to put it on the computer in illustrator to finish it off. Like doing colors highlights and shadows and stuff like that. It can take quite a long time. You can spend hours making one character.
With the Lambo Graveyard stuff, I just wanted to not have that kind of pressure and commitment to make perfect work. And I just wanted to do something on the iPad where I didn’t need to touch the keyboard or the mouse. And I just wanted to put stuff together in that kind of way. And yeah, some of the pen strokes are rough and one of those characters, if I wanted to blow it up the line weight would grow with it so the lines would be thick on that one character. So that’s something I like to avoid in my work. I like to keep a consistent line weight. But yeah, I just wanted to just kick back. Not be so fussy about doing the perfect vector lines, not be worried about color and everything and just go back just go back to basics really. And just see what kind of ideas came out from drawing.
remx: Well it absolutely turned out amazing. We’re super fans always of everything. But that collection was really cool. I feel like it’s very different in a sense there’s things that are [your style] and then I love that it’s like the raw, black and white and that you can kind of have that texture. So good on you for that one. That was a really great collection. And can’t wait to see all the other things that you have for us in store in the future.
Psychrome: For sure. Yeah there’s so many characters in that that I want to definitely pull some of those guys out and vector them because I think that vector characters are like PFPs. Yeah it’s definitely loads of legs in the artwork there I think.
remx: Yeah, most definitely. So you said that you were a designer. So you were doing web and graphic design stuff. Before the NFT Space I feel like less of those individuals were really showing in galleries and stuff. Have you ever shown in galleries or do you plan to? Is that even something that you want?
Psychrome: Yeah I used to do um I used to do just like a posca pen kind of artwork on cardboard. I used to paint on wood like MDF (medium density fiberboard) and stuff. Like there were some guys in this city who kind of ran a thing called Gorilla Galleries. And one of those guys saw my work and asked me to exhibit there. So I did that and that was pretty cool because I think I was in the shop helping them hang some of the artwork one day where somebody walked past and they were like oh this is sick.
They opened the door and bought it and I didn’t even hang it up yet… Yeah it was good. Yeah there were these guys Gorilla Galleries, there was another place called Hang Fire where I had some work, there was a place called Bristol Collab which had some work but unfortunately none of these guys are still going anymore. Covid killed off the last ones because they just couldn’t sustain themselves after shutting down for a year.
Yeah they all kind of closed. So I haven’t actually, I’m not actually doing any of that kind of stuff at the moment which is a bit of a shame and I definitely, it’s definitely something I need to improve in to get kind of back out there.
remx: Yeah, I mean because that’s what I was gonna ask… how are you building community if you aren’t doing showcases like that? I was just curious how you’re building community and opening up opportunities for yourself as an artist.
Psychrome: Yeah, when work kind of takes over and you get so much work, it’s very difficult to focus on your own stuff. So I do sometimes neglect my own stuff a lot, which is a mistake and I’ve recently been trying to correct that mistake. Hence things like the Lambo Graveyard where I just was doing more kind of on my own drawing rather than other people’s drawing and yeah, I’ve kind of made a bit more of an effort to actually go outside.
I’ve been stickering more which is slightly a gray area. Because the ETH that I did earn from my NFT stuff got really badly taxed because you have to pay the tax at the value you receive it. But I didn’t know that. So now it’s dropped loads. I owe so much tax even though I’m not getting the income. But this is interesting for me because now I’ve got a legitimate grudge against the HMRC which is like the tax people. So I now feel like I am absolutely within my rights to start stickering the street… you know there’s like different types of stickers and there’s like eggshell stickers that are really hard to get off and I just, I just think right, fuck you, you want to bring it to me, I’ll bring it to you and it’s like extra motivation in a way. It’s kind of funny. It’s not funny, it’s tragic but it just gives you motivation to carry on the fight.
remx: Yeah, I think we can all feel that pain. Anyone who’s in the crypto space and has made money in crypto understands the tax.
Psychrome: So yeah, that was another reason for naming the Lambo Graveyard really. I’m just never going to get to a Lambo at this rate. Not that a Lambo is really my goal. I just want to make stuff, you know but I don’t want to be unfairly treated and I feel likeI’m being unfairly treated having to pay tax on money I haven’t even got.
remx: Yeah, crazy. It is the truth. That is really, I mean it’s a system that is broken that I think, will take some time to figure out and regulations and all that stuff. So hopefully, hopefully we figure that out. But I want to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing a bit more about your journey and who you are as an artist and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
So thank you so much and hopefully I will get to see more and more collections coming from you. Um and anybody who hasn’t seen Lambo Graveyard definitely needs to go check it out. So thank you so much.
Psychrome: Yeah, thanks very much for having me appreciate it. Nice to talk to you.
Watch the full video:
Stay up to date on with Psychrome on their website: http://psychro.me/
Or follow along on their journey on Twitter and Instagram.
remx makes it easy for anyone to design their own digital fashion collections. Check it out at remx.xyz or sign up for the mailing list.
