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If I were to do something outside of the creative field, I would’ve studied psychology. I find human behaviour endlessly fascinating, which is why I was delighted when Andrea, a psychology student contacted me in regards to illustrating her thesis on how different typologies engage with the environment. Being a bit of a recycling nut and nature-lover as well this job ticked all the boxes. I read through Andrea’s notes, and then we had a telephonic brainstorm to work out how best to illustrate the different typologies and communicate the essential points of each. We wanted the people to be neutral, not any specific race or culture so to take skin tone out of the equation I came up with the idea to make them blue. We did, however, in some instances wanted to show diversity, where a typology isn’t confined to their echo chamber. For example ‘The explorer’ typology is interested in different cultures, so in one of her illustrations, she is friends with a woman in a headscarf.
I work digitally in Procreate on the iPad. It is the best of both worlds. Drawing with an Apple pencil is the digital version of drawing with pen on paper, except you get to undo your mistakes with the tap of a finger, work in layers, move things around and change colours much faster than traditional media allows. Plus it records a time-lapse video of all your work! (If you would like to see that please head over to my FB page, where I will be posting a few of these time lapse process videos)They are really fun to watch. Whenever I say, I’m an illustrator people always ask me what I illustrate and for who. One of the reasons I love what I do is that there is no one simple, straightforward answer to that question. The beauty of illustration is that you aren’t bound by reality; you are free to create a visual that can communicate complex ideas in a way that photography sometimes can’t. I mean let’s be honest a photo of some blue people in the woods would be downright freaky! I loved illustrating this thesis, and I hope that many more unusual briefs would find their way into my inbox. If you need something conceptualised and illustrated, please get in touch via my contact form.

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