This page is currently being updated from July 2020...
About Me
Hello! I'm Frances, an illustrator and 'amateur' artist also with experience in 2D animation, residing in the South-West of England.
Traditional means will always be the basis for my art. For work roles I will usually sketch out ideas and produce images traditionally to then scan in, colour and modify bits, if necessary, in Photoshop or a similar program. My speciality is animals, although I enjoy to draw more besides. I have been drawing since I could pick up a crayon. :)
Related Education:
Traditional means will always be the basis for my art. For work roles I will usually sketch out ideas and produce images traditionally to then scan in, colour and modify bits, if necessary, in Photoshop or a similar program. My speciality is animals, although I enjoy to draw more besides. I have been drawing since I could pick up a crayon. :)
Related Education:
2010 – onwards: Continue to attended various workshops, short courses and online courses in art- and illustration-related disciplines. Most recently I have been taking 'Make Art That Sells' online illustration courses.
2007 – 2010: I studied BA (Hons) Animation at the University of the West of England, in Bristol. Focusing primarily on 2D animation. More information can be found on my 'work and projects' page.
2006 – 2007: Did a year-long Art Foundation degree at Gloucestershire University. Here I was able to try out a few streams of the creative river… before focusing more on illustration and animation methods. (My final piece was more or less an animatic.)
2007 - onwards: Several one-day workshops, art group evenings, life drawing classes, etc. have continued to give me further knowledge in a few art disciplines.
Skills/Abilities:
- I have worked with both Mac and Windows computers. I currently own a Mac and I own the Adobe Production Suite CS4. I have used Photoshop to some degree for well over ten years now, and it is this program that I use to enhance my scanned in drawings. I also have experience using Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Dreamweaver. Studying animation meant I have also used Stop Mo Pro, Toon Boom and Monkey Jam. I am currently learning Illustrator.
- I can draw with pencils, pens, charcoal, pastels and the like. I colour with coloured pencils, marker pens and am experimenting more and more with inks and paints (oils, watercolour, gouache, acrylics). I'm very keen to become much more confident in traditional media.
Some Arty Interests:
- Traditional: Digital can pull off some wonderful art, but traditional will always remain most important to me. This is reflected in a lot of my pictures, as I like to retain a traditional line to them if they have been coloured in Photoshop. Drawings I have worked on straight on the computer, neatened up with a single black line, have often made the image look far too flat, as the original ‘energy’ of the drawing has been lost. Therefore I have reverted to drawing traditionally, going over the drawing with pen and then scanning in, to retain a more 'organic' appearance. In some drawings I will also leave the original pencil lines in to give an extra sense of movement and traditionalism.
- Books/Illustration: As a ‘draw-er’ of the happy, animal type, children’s illustrated books have always held an appeal. I am also very interested in older readers’ book illustration, where the use of black and white drawing style has often felt a comfortable approach for me. Maybe less realised than my drawing side, and certainly (sadly) lower on the ‘to do’ lists right now, is a desire to write my own stories!
- Animation: Growing up, traditional 2D animation was still very much the way of commercial animation, and cartoons such as Tom & Jerry, Looney Tunes, and The Animals of Farthing Wood, particularly inspired me. These mentioned cartoons also hint at my early interest more to animals, which would become my primary drawing focus. However, my most lasting inspiration has got to be the Walt Disney Classic feature films (think The Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, Pinocchio, Cinderella and so on). I find Walt Disney a very inspiring person for his sheer passion and determination which would help bring so many classic, ‘magical’, films to the big – and small – screen. Art in motion! Not only do I love to watch a great animated classic, I am also very interested in the history side, too.
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It’s a bit wordy, but if you’ve read at least some of it I hope it gives you a better idea of where I’m coming from in terms of my ‘creative endeavour’. Of course there are other things that interest me too, such as history, which is starting to inform my art topics more and more... But then I could be typing for a long time…
