Texture...

How I started to create illustrations with texture

“I am seeing texture and pattern…” said Pam Smy my tutor on the MA at Cambridge School Of Art, when I showed her my sketchbook. To be honest it hadn’t occurred to me at all but that tutorial changed everything for me.

I discovered this way of working by accident but really it was waiting to be found. And the best thing about an MA is, it’s all about playing and coming out of comfort zones and I thrived, once I let go of my previous illustrator training and outcomes.

These rushed little experiments using rice paper, Neo Crayons and Dr Martin Hydrus Inks were the beginning of a new visual language … well if we’re being straightforward a new ‘style’.

It went from these collaged scraps above, to creating illustrations for Red Riding Hood as an MA project, below.

I made these images, before I knew how to use Photoshop. In 2012 I didn’t even know how to turn on a Mac! I look back and wonder how an earth I did them and love their unfinished rawness. And I am glad I didn’t know how to digitally enhance and fiddle and re fiddle because I learnt so much and they have a freshness.

So what did I use?

I’ll post more soon…. I promise.