"I'll be stood in ASDA and see someone who looks like a Quentin Blake character from a Roald Dahl book, and I'll go home and draw them"
Dot Reel
This is a dotwork piece of an old‐school video camera that I drew as a present for my boyfriend's brother’s 21st birthday. He studies film and media, so I thought it'd be a pretty cool gift.
The process of making the dotwork pictures is means finding a photograph, sketching a simple outline in pencil and then using a black fineliner pen to dot it. I start at the point where it’s going to be the darkest and go from there. This one took me about thirteen hours. For deeper shading I use more dots, and for places like the lens where there's light reflection, I have to work that in to it by giving myself guidelines and shading certain places.
I create all my pieces at home in my lounge, at late o'clock when my little boy’s in bed. I normally start at about ten at night, and don't go to sleep until they're finished or my hand's falling off. Having the darkness outside with a lamp on inside helps me to focus ‐ I’ve always worked like that.
I’ve done art since I was tiny. In reception class, I was getting pulled up in assembly for my Christmas cards and I haven't been able to escape being creative since. People have asked me to make things throughout my life ‐ everything from writing fancy specials boards when working in a bar, to drawing people's kids, designing posters and dressing windows.
I recently got back into illustrating as a hobby, it all started from creating tattoo designs. After all the tattoo stuff, I wanted to specialise in one thing. There are loads of people in the world who do dotwork and do it really well, but I wanted to combine it with tattoo designs. I did a few that had a bit of dotwork in them and I enjoyed doing them so much that I couldn't stop. People always say, "That must kill your hand doing that over and over again."
I get inspired by everything from buildings and nature, to my son. Sometimes I'll be stood in a queue in ASDA and see someone who looks like a Quentin Blake character from a Roald Dahl book, and I'll go home and draw them, but mostly I get inspiration from films. I love going to the cinema and I do a lot of fan art of the on‐screen characters, I like to draw in anime style too.
I'd love to build a career in something creative now that my son’s a little older. It’s an ambition of mine to illustrate a book. Maybe a kid’s book...
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