Part 1: My Virtuosity

Knowing My Art - image 1 - student project

1. My illustrations often have gritty, printy and scratchy textures. I work with desaturated colour colour palettes and I use sketchy, uneven lines that mimic archival ink pens for smaller lines or details.

I create both flat-lay composition and full scenes with overlapping elements. Scenes are usually square format, flat-lays often portrait A5 sometimes built using outlines, other times using shapes. Depth conveyed through multiple layers of texture. Detailed and stylised. I sometimes incorporate hand lettering into pieces, or solely create lettering pieces.

Knowing My Art - image 2 - student project

2. My work often incorporates muted/desaturated tones with smaller burst of brighter hues which gives a subdued mood, and compositions are often detailed and complex which creates interest.

Knowing My Art - image 3 - student project

3. My illustrations often depict experiences and objects rather than abstract concepts. For example, I’ll usually draw scenes of things that I’ve seen or done while travelling, or flat lays of objects, people or animals. While my lines, textures and colours tend towards the more realistic side of the scale (i.e. detail orientated, 3D), and arrangement of the elements is more stylised. If I have a more abstract concept I usually approach it through hand lettering and adding small illustrative touches.

Knowing My Art - image 4 - student project

4. My illustrations have been used for prints, greeting cards, social media and fabric. I would like to create for murals, advertisements, websites and packaging.

Knowing My Art - image 5 - student project

5. I predominantly create my illustrations on my iPad using Adobe Fresco and a small selection – less than five – of Kyle T. Webster’s digital brushes. The brushes are a combination of pencil, ink, and gouache brushes that allow me to created heavily textured, printy and detail orientated illustrations. I also rely heavily on the free marquee tool (instead of the pen tool) to create shapes and masks. I have a standard colour palate (Thanks to Tom’s One palette illustrator class!) that I love and use for almost all of my illustrations. It’s been a big help in making my illustration style more cohesive. I also quite often use Photoshop to finish illustrations – making minor adjustments to colour, change formats etc.

My iPad, pencil, Fresco and its brushes have become an important way of making work. These tools are convenient and powerful in that they’re portable, familiar (Fresco has many of the same tools as Photoshop) and multi-purpose. I can create work in fresco, save it to creative cloud, and within my One drive filing system and also share on social media, all in one place. I previously created my illustrations solely in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, and while I do the final touch ups in Photoshop, I much prefer doing the bulk of the work in Fresco.

While I use these tools to create my illustrations, I generate my ideas in sketchbooks and by playing around with physical art supplies (watercolour paint, coloured pencils, markers). I’ve found that I come up with ideas of works faster than I can create and refine them so my sketchbooks are filled with thumbnail sketches and scribbled brainstorming. Currently my iPad acts as the place to illustrate, and my sketchbooks are a place to explore. I do sometimes sketch on the iPad but I don’t get as much joy out of it as I do in playing with new materials and trying new techniques.

Knowing My Art - image 6 - student project 6. I generally need a lot of time to create finished illustrations; I’m definitely a slow worker. While I don’t typically have trouble coming up with initial ideas, thumbnails, rough sketches and refined sketch, I often get stuck on the finished art and sometimes have to go back a few steps to figure out what it is that’s not sitting right. Usually it’s the composition. I quite often get part way through the process and realise that something’s not right, take a break of a few days (or weeks, depending on how stuck I am and how urgent the piece is!) to let things marinate subconsciously, and then come back to it with fresh eyes. It depends on the piece as well. Too much time away leads to over-thinking, not enough time away leads to work that I’m not happy with.

7. I generally work alone and usually listen to a podcast or music in the background. I don’t really like working in silence. If I’m just doing fun, experimental sketchbook drawings then I might sit on the couch with a tv show on. When I’m working on illustration I definitely prefer my own space and have a routine that involves multiple cups of tea and some type of yummy snack.

Part 2: My Vision

In Progress

Part 3: My Value

In Progress

Jamie Young

Illustrator

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