Tiny People

I’ve sat in my loungeroom now for weeks. 75 days to be exact. We’ve gone out for our daily exercise and a weekly shop, but otherwise, this is it. The new world - so so far from the one I was expecting in 2020 - is very empty of external inspiration, of travel and cafes and people and dreaming and all the other things that I love. I could probably write for days about the things I miss and the difficulties, but there is enough of that out there right now.

Instead, I thought I’d share a bit of an artistic journey I’ve been on. I’ve been trying hard to find some new ways of working that make me happy. I have just finished illustrating my first children’s book (so very exciting! Details and cover and artwork reveal coming soon), and I think, probably like many people, finishing a big project leaves you longing for freedom to play and explore. Months of focus on one thing just means I want to do something different and experiment a bit more.

I had thought this would involve getting out in the world and drawing my new home (we moved to the UK, to a tiny village near Cambridge, just weeks before we got locked down). But instead I had to make do with playing and experimenting from our living room.

Our beautiful little village in the snow… just after we moved in. It already feels a world away.

I was quite stuck. I didn’t know what to do with myself or where to start. With no humans to draw and no conversations to overhear and only a very limited array of personal things to draw (we arrived here just with a suitcase), I couldn’t rely entirely on observation as my play space without getting really really sad. I did try this and drew various corners of our sparsely furnished house but kept feeling sad and the drawings were lifeless. Then I sat there with my tea one day and saw myself in it and drew the world as reflected in my teapot.

One evening last year on the Orange Beak Studio Retreat. Such an utterly amazing thing to do. Photo: Orange Beak Studio

This kept me going for a little while. I liked how the teapot bent the world - it looked more interesting when it was a little more twisted. But I wasn’t quite satisfied and couldn’t find the energy to just keep repeating this, putting the teapot in another spot and seeing what I could see. And I had another series of voices keep coming into my mind - those of the women at Orange Beak Studio. On their retreat last summer they challenged me not to use my beloved pen (which by the way is a Pelikan M200 Fountain Pen that was gifted to me after I discovered it in a video of watched of the wonderful Melanie Reim drawing with it in a Sketchbook Skool course). I love this pen and will always draw with pen, but I accepted that to keep growing I need to play and experiment more and one way to do this is by shaking up the things I use to make my drawings with.

I tried a lot during that week on the retreat to use other things. I tried house enamel paint and quite liked it but never felt like it really sang to me and didn’t want to buy a heap of it when I knew I was about to move. I also tried using Tombow Markers and gouache and other things but never really found something that I loved. I tried screenprinting with the incredible Pam Smy (whose at home screenprinting workshop is absolutely inspiring and amazing). Again, I loved this, but felt like it couldn’t easily fit with my transient life style. Since the retreat every now and then I have tried to push myself to use things I wasn’t comfortable with when I drew from life out in the world, but usually I just felt really frustrated and it didn’t feel like me want it to be better and then, to feel good, go back to drawing with my pen.

My current little handbag sketchbook and my favourite pen.

But here I was with time and not much else available so I decided to have another go. I missed drawing people so so very much. They are my favourite thing by far to draw. I feel like everyone that I see has a story and so somehow when I draw them the world feels alive and rich and so much seems possible. I keep a little sketchbook in my handbag with my beloved pen and whenever I have a spare moment I often just draw some super quick contour lined drawings of the people that I can see. Sometimes out of the train window (gosh going on a train already feels like a faraway dream), or in a queue, or while waiting to meet someone. I was waiting in a supermarket queue in lockdown and realised I could do this here so I took it out and drew a few of the other people in the queue.

When I got home I realised I had a whole collection of people I could do something with. So I started recreating and further developing these quick drawings from life without using my pen.

Drawings from life and the materials I used to develop them a bit further - change their outfits, give them life and pattern and colour.

This was my first page of tiny people, developed and enhanced from the quick sketchbook drawings from life.

I’m not quite sure exactly what made me fall in love with these little people but I did. It was the first thing I had done since my book illustration that I liked and felt had some magic. The first thing since we’d been locked down into our newly small world that didn’t make me sad and the first thing since the Orange Beak Studio Retreat that I’d done without my pen that I liked.

I decided to do 100 of them and see what I learned.

And I got a bit addicted and still aren’t sick of them. I kept going and started to pay more attention to the things they held or gave them an animal or plant companion. I think each person just came alive for me and I really started to love not using my pen and relying entirely on watercolour, gouache and coloured pencils. I feel like a kid using coloured pencils so much again and I think that is the feeling I was looking for. Being able to play and feel free and get absorbed for hours into another world.

I start by just using watercolour and gouache to paint all the shapes. Choose a colour for their jacket and hat and leave white space for an arm or a face. And then grab some coloured pencils and start adding pattern and marks and bring them more fully to life. I started adding plants and a walrus, a giant tortoise and a flamingo. I gave a tiny person some tiny wool and another one a hummingbird and a penguin. I added geese and chickens, books and some musical instruments and just had so much fun.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with all of these… or even with the new way of working. But I feel pleased I pushed through with trying to do something and feel quite a relief to have made something I like without using my pen. I have fallen in love with coloured pencils (in particular Caran d’ache Luminance and the amazing Prismacolour Premier) and increased my confidence in being able to imagine worlds. I also feel like I’ve created myself a little haven of possibilities amidst a very limited external world of inspiration.