![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ibiza-style.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/rory-dobner-illustrator-ibiza-style-02.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cI was always obsessed with drawing,\u201d Rory chuckles. \u201cI presumed all adults were good at drawing, I didn\u2019t know any different. From a very young age I used to ask my father to draw something for me, like a horse, and he would draw and it would look exactly like a horse. It was only when I asked my mother, and I never asked her again, it looked more like a tortoise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rory, who has a base in London and in Ibiza, says his \u201cobsession\u201d was pretty extreme and continued throughout his childhood. \u201cIt often used to get me into trouble. I once used up all my dad\u2019s fax paper, you know the sheets with all the perforated holes. He would describe is as like an Andrex puppy at the end of a toilet roll, I had just scribbled all the way along all the paper. In the end he built me a blackboard so I could rub out mistakes instead of using all his paper. I once drew on my mum\u2019s wallpaper, she had tiny polka dots and I thought, wow, if I join all the dots up I can make a huge bear. I went to get her and said \u2018hey look, I\u2019ve improved your wallpaper\u2026\u2019 then I got grounded!\u201d<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t the last time; \u201cMy dad showed me a Henry Moore sculpture once and I was really interested in the fact his name was on it. We had a VW Beetle when we were growing up and that looked like a Henry Moore sculpture to me so I decided to sign it and I went off to get a screwdriver and scratched Rory into the metal. He went way more mad than my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to his adult life after studying at Central St Martin\u2019s School of Art and Design in London \u2013 and he has been commissioned by many impressive names such as Liberty London, Fortnum and Mason, Agent Provocateur, Christian Dior and many more including Pikes, here in Ibiza.<\/p>\n
He sites influencers as Rodin and Michelangelo – artists who were creating mega scale pieces – also Hieronymus Bosch too.<\/p>\n
Imagery in the childhood books, Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland are a strong influence to his ink illustrations. \u201cIt was the simplicity and effortlessness – you can have a couple of black lines but you can understand that is a wild bit of the woods in England and you can feel the atmosphere and the bees buzzing. You don\u2019t have to paint the entire scene in to get that information.\u201d<\/p>\n
The infamous London store Liberty was the first to stock his work and its popularity soon spread beyond to retail outlets around the world including Japan, New York, and Paris. London\u2019s iconic Fortnum and Mason approached him initially to draw their shop front for a tea set; the owners loved it so much they had it printed on building-sized hoarding to hang on the store\u2019s facade while renovation work was carried out. And it grew from there with numerous homeware designs recently including a Queen\u2019s Platinum Jubilee collection.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rory first came to Ibiza with friends from Manchester, who went on to be the architects behind Manumission \u2013 Dawn Hindle and Andy McKay. This has led to him creating many of the famous wall illustrations at Pikes Hotel, on the outskirts of San Antonio. The Monocle Cat and Smokey Fish \u2013 just two of his iconic designs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeas are often born out of daydreaming. I kept seeing this guy outside an office smoking at all times of the day. It was like he spent his whole day out there, I thought he must be incredibly bored, his life is like a goldfish, going around and around doing the same thing all the time. So I drew it on the back of a map, or whatever I had at the time. Then I was thinking about the smoking zones and how it can be seen as rebellious. So I thought, my fish can smoke but that\u2019s the ultimate no smoking zone \u2013 underwater. He\u2019s so rock and roll he can smoke underwater.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some themes from the famous British spy thriller James Bond influence another iconic image of Rory\u2019s. He explains: \u201cIt had been pouring with rain for months and months and I\u2019d watched lots of Bond films. The cat is a mash up of some the villains.\u201d
\nBlofeld\u2019s famous cat, of course, in the central role, but with Oddjob\u2019s steel rimmed bowler hat and Dr No\u2019s monocle. \u201cI just thought, he\u2019s not an evil cat, he just has an evil owner but just imagine he must overhear all these evil plans. I thought this expression, he\u2019s just heard this evil of evilest plan and he\u2019s gone \u2018oooh this is a good one!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was amazing speaking to Tony (Pike) and he was telling me all the stories about the people who have stayed there, all these amazing parties, the crazy things that have happened there.\u201d Rory says he started painting characterful numbers on the doors of the hotel rooms, but then was welcomed when he suggested painting on the walls. \u201cWe stayed there as long as I was painting – it went from the Spring to the Summer and my kids were hanging out with all these rockstars and musicians. Tony was really up for it \u2013 he thought the drawings were great and breathing new life into the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rory wrote a book called the Ink House \u2013 he owns a reformed finca in the north of Ibiza that carries the same name: \u201cAs I am always leaving the doors open to my house in Ibiza, I am always finding geckos and cats have wandered in. So I was imagining if I left the house for years and years with all the doors open, what all the animals would get up to. You\u2019d have birds nesting on top of the wardrobes and that kind of thing. But I took it to another level and the longer they spent in the house the more human they became, they would wear clothes and reading books and playing piano.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, Rory is concentrating on his Alice in Wonderland collection.<\/p>\n