Another week, another great Kingston illustration graduate: today’s Talent displays great adeptness at creating beautifully realised images and sophisticated narrative sequences.
How do you describe your practice?
I struggle to define what my practice is, but if I were to narrow it down to something it would be drawing. It fuels and kickstarts every single one of my creative endeavours,whether that be illustration, animation, pattern design, print making, building, anything. If I were to be more specific about my practice, I would say that I'm an illustrator who focuses on narrative and conceptual drawings.
You've just graduated from the illustration course at Kingston. What has the course been like for you and what have you particularly taken from it?
I've loved my time at Kingston, and would heartily recommend it to any student who's interested in illustration or animation. The great thing about Kingston for me was the sense of community, within my course but also within the art school as a whole. Being surrounded by hard working, creative people everyday is something I'm really going to miss. But on the bright side, I've met a great group of people who I'm sure I’ll be friends with for a long time to come.
You're work is heavily drawing-based – do you see the use of digital technology as an integral part of your process as well?
The digital aspect of my work has only really entered my creative process in the last year or so, until then the Adobe Suite was completely foreign to me. I only really used Photoshop for compositing different aspects of an illustration together, like a digital collage. Now my working process always starts with drawing terrible drawings in my sketchbook, anything to get my brain flowing with ideas. After that I start to refine the drawings, thumb nailing compositions out. When I’m happy with the composition I make the final sketch which I scan in to my computer and add the colour in Photoshop. I really try and hang on to the handmade element within my illustrations, and embrace the mistakes which I've made.
What are you working on now and what's next?
At the moment, I'm currently revisiting an idea I had last year. It's a children's book called I Dare You..., about two bored gorillas in the jungle who dare each other to eat crazy things. After getting highly commended in the Macmillan Children's Book Prize, I’ve had some great feedback so I really want to rework it and push it further. I have also just applied for a job at the university print room as a technician, where you help with the day to day running of the print room. I felt this would be a really great opportunity to expand my knowledge in the area of print, and provide a chance to really experiment with image-making.
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