Professional Practice
Contents Why Illustration My Inspirations My Driving force My Process M y Au d i e n c e a n d m a r k e t p l a c e Internet and Business Potential entry points CV/Contact/Info
Why Illustration? An early 90's home video shows a young girl playing with her twin on a swing, who, when asked what she enjoys doing at nursery, she answers “sticking!� That young girl was me. Since the age I could grab a pencil or glue stick I have always loved creating images, telling a story with marks, colour line and shapes. Creating something from nothing but a blank page. Expressing myself, and communicating almost like an extra sense. I spent all my school years developing my artistic streak, forever drawing and creating new exciting images. So after I completed my Art foundation my natural choice was to go on to university to study Illustration and I was thrilled to be chosen to study it at the Arts University of Bournemouth.
My Inspirations and Inuences
Since I discovered her work the dark twisted humour of Portuguese contemporary illustrator/artist Paula Rego has fascinated me. Her take on classic fairy/folk tales really stuck with me, her pieces tend to be ďŹ lled with strong female characters, each telling a story so well. Rego often reproduces well known stories but her work adds intriguing twists and questions that appeal to my always wondering mind.
I can remember being struck by the dark, intense etchings by Gustave Doré in ‘Dantes inferno’ the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem 'Divine Comedy', the poem follows Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hell. Something about the black scratchiness of the lines and the play on light and dark really creates a drama that transfixes me. The horror recreated in the prints intrigue me and I've always been interested in recreating love this printed feeling using my first lo of drawing.
As a kid, Tim Burtons animated movie 'The Nightmare before Christmas' mesmerized me and as life went on I continued to follow the directors work in awe. I love the 'weird' quirky qualities of his work. Later on I discovered his initial sketches for movies he has done and I loved the way he drew so freely and added splashes of colour with ink and watercolour, I feel they really reflect his unique animation and directing style. In addition I really admire the way his work is directed at children as well as being very appealing to adults. This is the kind of feel I have aimed for in my work.
Nature has always been of great interest to me, I think the beauty of nature simply cannot be beat. I’ve always appreciated a giant dramatic landscape as well as the tiny complex pattens found in nature. With my love of nature come my love of Animals. I turned vegetarian when I turned 18 whilst researching animal rights for an art project and I have always had a soft spot for animals. It’s the characters that each individual animal has that really make me smile. I love being able to develop this in my work, creating people-animals or simply channelling character through a picture of an animal or insect for that matter. Animals can be of even more interest to me than people sometimes.
Light, dark, nature and a sense of magic sum up what fascinates and inspire me in life and my work.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time”. ~Thomas Merton
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What is my driving force? My driving force has always been and will always be Creating
images, nothing beats the feeling of simply making a mark or a line on a page . I love expressing character and emotion with these marks. I want to create work that either makes people look twice,laugh or think and I want to create images that stay with an audience. Some could say I am creating the work for an audience but I like to think I still create it more for myself. Fellow illustrators I have worked with/around have really been a driving force for me in my work. I ďŹ nd looking at other work a constant source of inspiration and ideas. I love lo reading their images as well as looking at their uses of marks, line and colour.
M y
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r o c e s s My process heavily involves drawing, I start off any project with drawing, this is how I get out my ideas on to paper. I'm always experimenting with line, line has always been something I love. I will use pencil firstly, transferring and developing this with the dark satisfying line of a china-graph pen and lastly working with the beautiful heavy black flatness of ink. I am particularity interested in the drama the ink creates in juxtaposition to clean white negative space. paper or negati I often work from life and have a great interest with working from nature, I like to get out into the woods, the drama, natural patterns and randomness in nature inspire me. I Like to watch and draw people I see, mostly strangers. Nothing beats sitting somewhere like the beach people watching and drawing in my little sketchbook. After I have reworked my drawing to a the standard I want, I tend to use colour as a device for drama and fun. I enjoy experimenting with ways of adding colour, whether it be with using watercolour, oil pastels or adding colour using photoshop. I use Storyboarding to help bring out ideas and develop a narrative, I tend to end up re drawing and developing these storyboards with different mediums. I find storyboarding is a great way to almost visually think on paper and work out ideas. I usually “polish’ off work with Photoshop. I find it a very good tool for cleaning up work and correcting mistakes. I have over the years developed my skill on photoshop and have experimented with my analogue imagery by, playing around with its composition as well as adding colour digitally. I like to play with the use colour, using it as point of reference but also using it purposely off the lines like a printing miss-register giving it a fun vintage feel. I have ha also dabbled in screen printing, I think the big printed pieces go well towards the project, also creating nice final pieces to sell in themselves. I have also screen printed gift cards I designed. Through my process I still make sure my main aim is still having fun and creating fun images. I learn from and welcome mistakes, I have made some very interesting work in the past that have developed from my mistakes. de
“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.� ~Neil Gaiman
Through this course I have learnt the importance of presentation and have been improving on this since year 1. My work often ends up in digital forms but it still relies heavily on the physical piece because of the hand drawn physical nature of it. I have learnt to keep pieces safe in portfolio's the bigger the work the bigger the portfolio! The children's picture book I have created recently has been the first book I have had printed and bound and I have to say I am very ha pleased with the professional looking result.
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” ~Robert Henri
I have also converted the character of the greedy mischievous spider into 3d form using wire and paper-mache, I feel as though his character has translated from 2d to 3d very well and is a fun addition to my ďŹ nal out come of work.
My marketplace and audience My most recent work for my Final Major Project is a Childrens picture book aimed at 8 to 12 years, so my current audience is mainly children. However I feel my work can be appreciated by most ages as it has an almost timeless feel. ha also been developing Throughout the course I have and selling greeting cards aimed at young adults. I felt there was a big gap in the market here, as the card currently available in shops do no tend to lend themselves very well to young adults. So I created card designs that would appeal to this audience, using humour and simple fun images and text. I have been experimenting with screen printing as a faster more eective way to produce these cards and have also printed one side cards.
Having a strong internet presence is very important for any practising illustrator. I have a created a blog that I update regularly and have bought a domain name for. I think it a wise idea to buy your own domain and site name, my website is now called simply 'laurabetton.com' simple and easy to remember. This site is set up on 'tumblr' which I find a very easy, flexible platform through which I have gained a fair amount of followers. I am constantly updating my blog and I use it as an almost visual diary putting up any work I have been producing no matter how irrelevant it might be to other posts. My blog also has a link for my online portfolio, something again I feel that every contemporary illustrator should have. The internet is now such a big part of the illustration business and a online portfolio is instantly accessible by anyone in the world who has the internet. My online portfolio is held by a site called 'cargocollective' a very popular portfolio site used by many creatives. I also have a secondary blog on blogger.com this has less followers but I keep it because it tends to get a lot of hits through google (who brought us blogger) which is another way to gain viewers. I do as well hold a professional twitter which is a great way to network and share news and the occasional pictures with other illustrators, people in the creative industry and anyone interested in my work. People can also find my online portfolio and blogs through this twitter page. For all my online blogs and portfolio and twitter I ha have worked on and tweaked to the way I wanted to look, creating and adding my own banner which is on each, helping them to flow together and generally helping the look of my online presence and helping create a strong online branding. I recently got a 'Linkdin' account, 'Linkdin' is a business networking site, a great way to meet people in the industry.
My online Porfolio
My Blog Laurabetton.com
Throughout the years studying in Aub I have taking part in a number of auctions and exhibitions. This has shown to be a great way of getting your work out there to a direct audience and even get feedback on work. This year we held 'silent auction', set up by a member of our course, in which I have successfully sold work.
Business cards are also a great way of getting your name out there. I designed a simple yet dramatic business card which I felt summed me up as an illustrator. The card includes my website and business email. I am going to send these to art editors and any creative business I take an interest to.
I have had an amazing 3 years studying at Aub but now is my time to take of like a bird and y. Throughout my course I have been researching and learning way in which to per-pell myself into the illustration industry. I will be continuing to constantly update and work on my portfolio and using this to apply to Agencies; I will apply to agencies that base themselves around book art as well as more editorial based agencies. I will also apply to top illustration agencies such as 'The Artworks Illustration Agency, Agency rush, lemonade Illustration Agency and heart agency. I will also be searching greeting card companies as well as independent shops that would be happy to stock my cards, such as 'What Alice found' in Boscombe. I could even set up a stall and sell cards on the beach to the tourist crowds in Bournemouth in the summer. I also plan to set up online shops to sell work, I will consider selling on 'ebay' or 'Amazon' as well as setting up an online store on 'esty.com' which I will link to my website in order to created a ow of audience. al Competitions are always a good way to keep up motivation as well as a great way for your work to get exposure. Competitions providers include, 'Little white lies, Anorak, House of Illustration and Folio society, D&AD and Talent house. I fully intend pay to become a member of the Association of Illustrators (AOI), they will help support me in working in the Illustration industry as well as giving professional helpful advice.
Potential entry points?
Portfolio
cargocollective.com/laurabetton
Website Blog
l a u r a b e tt o n . c o m laurabettonillustration.blogspot.co.uk
Skills
Transferable skills
Photoshop InDesign AfterEffects Screen Printing Typography
Organization skills Fast learner Time magement
Exhibitions
Contact
2012 ‘Bespoke’ exhibition at Café Boscanova, Boscombe, Dorset
laurabetton@hotmail.co.uk
2013 ‘Silent auction’ at AUB Arts cafe