For this Study Task I will be focusing my research on UK-based illustrator and musician Sarah Tanat-Jones, who I first discovered through Twitter a year ago and have been following closely ever since. She is represented by illustration agency Handsome Frank and has clients such as Asos, Waitress, Benefit Cosmetics, CNN, Goop, The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, Sainsbury's, Universal Music, Vanity Fair, Virgin, The National Trust and Wetransfer. Sarah draws by hand with brush and ink before digitally colouring with a palette of bold and bright shades.
As well as an impressive portfolio of work and clientele, Tanat-Jones has a strong presence on the internet through her Website, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Behance. While the majority of these links focus on her portfolio and professionalism, Sarah's Twitter page allows us a glimpse into who she is as a person; witty, opinionated, political, inquisitive, a feminist, a humanist, ethical, a traveller, an arachnophobe, a musicoholic, pro-EU and anti-Trump.
Her main website, sarahtanatjones.com, has a simple and easy-to-use layout, as frequently seen with other contemporary professional illustrators, drawing the viewer's main focus to her portfolio of work with clickable thumbnails to reveal the name of the piece, the themes, the client and the materials used. As well as this, Sarah has a main point of contact (e-mail), details about her agent, a professional photograph, client list, links list and small autobiographical paragraph in her About section. These are the primary fundamentals that a client will want to see when browsing an illustrator's website.
One of my favourite quotes from Sarah is this handy piece of advice featured in an interview with DigitalArts Online: "Don't give your 'money job' your all, be strict with setting times to do the work you love in the evenings. It's not easy, but it's so worth it. And it's useful and valuable to experience that kind of pressure. It makes you more determined for illustration to be a success. I worked in offices for a good five years before going freelance and I learned loads about working life, office politics, different skills. I actually really value that time." This quote tells me a lot about Sarah's ability to multi-task, persevere in order to achieve her goals, determination, resourcefulness and life experience - using what some would consider to have been a waste of their time and a barrier to their dream job as a valuable source of skills. Additionally, I also like value quote from the same interview and feel it feeds into this module as a whole, "I think that freelance illustrators are at their best when they are dedicated to the business side as well as image-making, but it can be hard and time-tabling a period of time each week to deal with professional practice can help."
Having grew up in Brighton, moving to London, going to school in Edinburgh and now living in Glasgow, Sarah's tendency to travel feeds into her overall practice and is an overarching theme in her portfolio. She keeps a travel diary consisting entirely of quick illustrations of places she visits and people she comes across in train stations, coffee shops and around cities. Food is another big theme, with illustrated items such as fish, lobster, crab, and rustic vegetables being featured, due to high demand from editorial clients including Waitrose Magazine, Brummell Magazine and Vogue, as well as being inspired by walking past her local fishmonger's on a daily basis. Even breakfast at a friend's house has inspired an illustration of a blender and raw ingredients in her aforementioned diary! As a musician herself, and a big lover of 70's New Wave, Sarah has produced towering illustrations that were projected onto architecture and open space for The Scottish Opera's retelling of Carmen, self-initiated music icon illustrations featuring greats such as Siouxsie Soux, Joan Jett and Patti Smith, more contemporary music giants such as the Spice Girls and One Direction and a Pop Boys series of young heartthrobs Justin Bieber, Zayn Malik and Drake.
Highly opinionated in topics such as politics, gender equality, culture and society, Sarah tends to respond with quick illustrations posted on Twitter conveying her annoyances at racism, sexism, ableism, consumerism and general closed-mindedness in her easily recognisable highly-stylised, quirky, colourful and textured way. She has no hint of animosity in her work, however, and shows a gentle, grounded and thoughtful tone of voice through the rounded shapes, limited text, bright colours and simplistic forms - rather than perpetuating the violent words, actions and imagery of world events and politics.
I really enjoy Tanat-Jones' work because of the themes she responds to - all of which are current, heavy topics - and that she debunks the speculation that illustration is no longer thought-provoking or politically charged and is instead withdrawn from big debates favouring aesthetics over discussion. She has a good balance in he use of both digital and analogue processes, is clearly skilled (winning D&AD Best of New Blood in 2009), is hard-working and determined (as seen in her interviews and strong portfolio) and has achieved great success in transitioning to freelance illustration, producing well-received work in a variety of advertising, editorial and merchandise pieces for well-stablished clients.
I feel that Sarah's work, and even her personality, draw comparisons to my own. She doesn't see herself as an illustrator or musician divided, instead celebrating both and letting them feed into each other's discipline - playing her music when creating illustrations and creating linocut prints for her album covers. I feel I identify with this as I equally enjoy writing and illustrating, not wishing to focus on one more than the other. I want my stories to feed into my illustrations and vice versa - being self-sufficient, creative and ultimately free. Interdisciplinary yet focused. I wish to achieve as much as Sarah has through serious hard work, dedication, love of image-making and successfully using social media as a platform to share my work, my ideas and my opinions. Her work captures a rhythm of line, tone and colour that I would like to learn to emulate through practice and refinement. Her pieces work as stand-alone images as well as the context they were created for and I strive for that ambiguity and adaptability.
"There's great movement throughout Sarah's images and while she had to town down some of the violence that's in the opera (Carmen), the passion, the sorrow and the despair is all there in beautiful swooshes of colour and sweeping lines." It's Nice That, June 2015
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