I think that it’s an animal’s inability to be judgemental (except perhaps in the case of cats) that draws me to them. I have never once felt uncomfortable around an animal as I sometimes do with people.
As you can probably tell by looking through my section on the Illustration Machine site, I like to draw animals. I can draw other things too, but animals are my favourite. They are a huge source of inspiration to me. There is an infinite variety of colours and textures which make them so wonderful to draw. But it is their personalities which I find most exciting. In the same way as every human has a different personality, so do animals, and I love trying to portray this through my illustrations.
I draw in quite a graphic style. I use Edding Drawliner pens of different nib widths. My favourites are the tiny nibs which are 0.2mm thick. These are excellent for creating the texture of fur in an illustration. I use Adobe Illustrator to colour in my illustrations as I like the contrast between the flat blocks of digital colour and the tiny pen marks. I also work just in pen, or in watercolour.
I think my biggest artist influence has to be Beatrix Potter. Although our styles are completely different, she shared the same view of animals as I do and found them fascinating to draw. People laughed at her anthropomorphism of animals; ducks in bonnets and rabbits in jackets, but they went on to become some of the best-selling children’s books of all time. Even today some people find the attribution of ‘human’ characteristics to animals ridiculous, but I cannot look at an animal without seeing a human quality in it. When they have so much personality and share so many of the same traits as we do, it seems like the logical thing. After all, we are all animals.
The Illustration Machine 