Ep 26 - Becoming an Illustrator with Anna Wilson
In this episode, I speak with urban-sketcher and illustrator Anna Wilson. Anna is what I describe as a 'deliberate artist', in that she has taken strong decisions to change her career trajectory towards art and illustration.
I am always interested in speaking to 'deliberate artists', because they have such motivated and well-considered reasons for the things they do. What does a path of self-education in art look like? How do they gather influences, images, and inspirations, to guide this path? Anna tells me about the role that travel plays in shaping her perspectives, the lessons she picks from photography and carrying a little sketchbook, and what she carries from her formal education in human geography.
Check out Anna's work on her website.
Listen to our conversation on your choice of streaming service, or catch a link below.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the SneakyArt Podcast. I'm your host, Nishant Jain. On this podcast, I speak with people who draw or paint their urban environments from observation.
I like to describe myself as a deliberate creative - a deliberate writer, a deliberate artist, and a deliberate podcaster. What I mean by the word is that there was no natural progression in my life towards doing these things. I made discreet, deliberate decisions at various points in my life to be who I am. This meant pushing myself to write regularly back when there was no way to make money off one's writing online. It meant starting a webcomic when social media was still in its infancy, and there wasn't a way to go viral. It meant giving my creative pursuits time AFTER all other obligations - in my case, finishing a Bachelor's and then a Master's degree in mechanical engineering, and entering into a PhD program in Biomechanics and Neuroscience. At one point, I decided I wanted to be a full-time writer. I was done with the half-measures, and was not content with somehow stealing an hour at the end of a busy day. I decided to change the ladder I was climbing, and start at the base of a new one. I became an artist a couple of years after that. And a podcaster another couple of years after that. The guiding principle underneath all these deliberate decisions was my curiosity - both to learn things, and to do things. Curiosity is my fuel. It drove my interest in science for a very long time. Today it drives my art, my writing, and also every podcast conversation.
I was eager to speak with my guest for this episode for two interconnected reasons - her style makes me very curious about her work, and I have come to learn that like me she is also an artist out of deliberate intent. My guest today is urban-sketcher and illustrator Anna Wilson, speaking with me from Cornwall in England. Anna went a long way forward with academia. She holds a PhD in human geography. We start our conversation talking about that. You will see that her education lends her a unique perspective to the world, and this is reflected in the subjects she chooses for her art. As a self-taught artist, I am always curious to hear about how other people have treaded this path. Was there even a path to begin, or did they have to make their own way through the woods of their lives? At what point, taking this analogy forward, did they find the paths of other artists, and in which ways did they choose to follow it or continue on their own? In this respect, we talk about organized education, and also decentralized education which is booming since COVID19. I ask Anna about the people whose services she used to pick up key skills, and we talk about not only the art but also the business of being an illustrator.
They talk about Anna's PhD in Human Geography, and how she developed an interest in the subject. Anna explains her early interest in travel and drawing.
"I learned so much about myself, about the world, about power, inequality and access to resources. Came back and studied that - international development as an undergrad degree, and history. Because I was very interested in how it came to be that the world looks the way it does today." - Anna, on quitting college in her first year to live in Kenya, and coming back with a better idea of what she wanted to study.
Both Nishant and Anna share their reasons for quitting academia and becoming artists.
"As my career progressed, I drew less and less. It took a lot of my creative energy to do that - write academic papers, and chase that career path. I was successful but I also started to die, I think, because I had stopped drawing at that time."
"It let me understand what place it occupied in my life, because I used to be good at science. And when you're good at things, you think why not do more, and more. And you think it might be your first priority. But then when something else is taken away, you realize how much more you want that, and you have to recalibrate what you want to do with your time." - Nishant, on accepting that he wanted a creative career, not an academic one.
Nishant asks how having formal knowledge of human geography affects what Anna sees, and how she appreciates those things.
"I love the contrast between the organic and the inorganic... In a city, how a tree might have been there for way before the buildings around it, so that sense of different temporal scales, I enjoy that contrast in a picture."
Nishant asks how Anna went into illustrating for children's books, and the online course she took to learn some important basics.
Apart from the confidence to draw from imagination, to create original characters, Anna felt like she needed to know the business side of things - what she would need to provide to an art director, how to get the attention of those who hire illustrators.
They discuss the difficulty of creating a character as compared to drawing from observation of life.
Using her different inspirations - urban-sketching, travel, photography and illustration - how does Anna feed and strengthen her imagination and inspiration?
"The places that I love I absorb into an image bank in my mind. When I want to illustrate, the first thing I go to in my mind is a place I have been or a place I would like to go, and can I possibly set this book in that place..."
"Urban sketching feeds heaps into my illustrating because it is from where I gather my image bank, unless its tigers or foxes. But if its people or cities or buildings or window-shapes or cops, all of that is in my mind because its things I've drawn so much."
What is the unique value of urban-sketching vs photography in building the data bank of images?
Anna explains how drawing helps with the micro stuff - the details of the scene, the shapes of the window-sills etc. But photography helps with the larger ideas - composition and lighting.
What are some unique considerations for children's book illustrations?
What makes a scene for Anna? What kinds of stories does she look for in the different places she visits?
Nishant asks about Anna's current projects, and what it is like to work on multiple creative projects at the same time.
Nishant asks Anna about the "job of being an illustrator" - finding work, sharing her work, and meeting professional standards.
They discuss the difficulty of doing 'something different', or something that is experimental, on Instagram.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
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I'll see you in a couple of weeks, with another new episode where I learned a lot of new things. Until, thank you for your time and attention.