Knowing that Laura was a graduate from illustration I wrote an email to
her asking for some help and insight about her practice and she was really
honest and truly helpful with her responses :)
- I have
selected Laura Weeks to research because I really admire her style of
illustration, her application of character design to different mediums and
how she then furthers this to create illustrated products she can
sell.
- I would
describe her style as realistic in terms of the shapes of the animals she
illustrates, but they also have lots of character. She uses a very minimal
colour palette, lots of white space (where necessary) and pays lots of
attention to minute detail. Her illustrations which are made just using a
pencil are beautiful.
- I would
say that Laura works within the indie/alternative illustration
genre.
- Her target
audience seems to be ageless, her illustrations can be bought on
children's clothing, greetings cards and collectable resin models, making
her work appealing and accessible to a really wide audience. Laura says
that sometimes a target audience is met due to whatever brief she may be
working on, but on the whole she creates work which pleases her and in
that way her audience is anybody who enjoys the same things she does, or
admires her artwork.
- According
to Laura, the best sort of clients are those who give you plenty of
freedom when working to a brief. Her favourite brief was for Delta Sleep
as she was given lots of creative freedom and only a very vague idea as to
the illustrated content which meant she could create something they would
want and something she would like too, it remains her favourite
commissioned piece so far.
She was also given an
editorial illustration do to for Stranger magazine. She had to illustrate
a short story which had rather dark connotations to it and she was given
very little art direction which made the project a bit of a challenge but,
personally, i think she answered the brief really well and i love the
final illustration!
- In her
portfolio, i would love to have worked on Laura's Sad Circus project.
Although i create similar 3D work, her models are just that much more
honed in terms of sculpting and painting skills. Also, i really liked the
way the models and illustrations sat together, the photographs of the
final models help to complete the project and it is nice to see all of
these elements coming together, seeing a set of characters being used on
different mediums etc.
- In terms
of self promotion, Laura freely admits that she is not as pro-active about
it as she could be but she does have a beautiful portfolio site and a blog
which she tried to keep up to date. She says that many of the commissions
she has been given is due to people seeing her images on google which is a
result of her having images on her blogger (good to know!) Laura also
mentioned that she takes part in lots of creative fairs, not only to sell
her work but also to network with others and give out lots of business
cards etc. Laura's best promotional tool, according to her, is her 3D toys
and models as they tend to set her apart from other illustrators and
people wishing to hire an illustrator are always looking for something
different.
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