Process(es)

At university I am currently studying two disciplines, painting and illustration. I enjoy bringing my own style to both disciplines and letting them feed off each other, but they require vastly different processes. When painting I can just sit down with a piece of board and my paints and start painting, occasionally trying out a couple of ideas as thumbnails first. In illustration however, it takes weeks of preparation for me to be ready to start on the final piece. I need to read through the source material and decide what is important, to find what is not said and imagine it myself, and then to put an interesting spin on it. And then of course there are characters and settings to design, compositional studies to draw and a colour palette to decide on. I find that when I eventually get to the final piece I put a lot of pressure on myself for it to be perfect because of the amount of time I've already spent working on it. Both the painting and illustration processes can be difficult, one requires spontaneity, the other patience. Trying to do both at the same time has been an interesting balancing act for me, and I admit that I am looking forward to specialising in a single discipline in my third year. I'm excited to throw myself fully into one thing!

A recent painting Some thumbnails for The Fox and The Woodcutter