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Speaking with Illustrator, Angela Spurgeon
Friday, 9 April 2021 12:44:00 Europe/London
Angela Spurgeon is an amazing illustrator who creates bright and colourful images featuring incredible wildlife.
In our latest Azutura interview, we caught up with Angela to discuss how she juggles freelance work with being a parent, her inspirations, her use of bright and bold colours and much more.
Keep reading to see what she had to say and for a chance to see some of her marvellous wall stickers.
Hi Angela, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Can you start off by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your life?
Based near the beautiful Quantock Hills in Somerset, my illustrations and designs are inspired by life in the west country and the wildlife that surrounds us. Each piece is created to raise a smile using vibrant colours and reasons to be cheerful.
Having trained to degree level in graphic design and illustration, I began freelancing over ten years ago after years working in the advertising industry. My love for bright, decorative, nature-inspired prints and patterns inspired me to teach myself surface pattern design with help from sites such as Skillshare. I am still learning, exploring and enjoying every moment.
How’s lockdown life been for you? Has it affected your productivity?
Lockdown is a strange one because my normal working day has not changed much from pre-pandemic to lockdown life. Since going freelance, I have always worked from home using online apps and websites to reach customers and provide my design services. It’s almost like I have unwittingly created my business in a way, over the years, to fit around having to work in a pandemic from home.
The one thing that has differed and has impacted my productivity is not being able to get out and meet people - that is something I have missed hugely. I always made a point of working with some local businesses that I can meet up with personally. I also made sure I got to a few local creative business networking events each year.
Working on your own from home can be very isolating. The way it’s worked for me in the past has been to ensure that I regularly saw other people working toward similar goals for inspiration and encouragement. There are so many people I miss and look forward to seeing again.
How and when did you first become interested in illustration?
I can’t remember not ever being interested in illustrations and drawings. I loved picture books as a child and was a big fan of Tony Hart on TV, I always wanted to have a studio like his. I think watching him draw and pour over illustrated books, when I was little, made me want to draw for a living when I grew up.
As a teenager, I used to say I wanted to become a ‘commercial artist’, meaning, in my mind, an artist that made money - perhaps drawing for books, magazines, adverts, packaging or home decor. Then, my school art teacher saw how keen I was and encouraged me to think about studying a foundation art course at college and consider taking graphic design as one of my GCSE options, which thankfully I did.
This was the first time I really became aware of the career options available to me. I am so grateful to have had some good teachers and tutors who encouraged me and helped point the way.
What’s a typical day like in the life of Angie Spurgeon?
A typical working day means to be ready and at my desk for 9 am, just as I would if I was back working in an office. I tend to stick to a normal working week as much as possible, Monday to Friday, 9 to 6, with a couple of breaks. Sometimes it doesn’t always work like that, but when I do stick to that schedule, things get done and it all feels right.
Each day is a little different depending on what projects I am working on. I tend to work in a few different ways to bring income into my business. For instance, I have an Etsy and Folksy shop, so a couple of mornings a week I am focused on processing orders from them, making sure I have enough stock and that my listings are up to date.
Other days, I will be designing commissioned projects for other businesses, such as new products e.g. greetings cards, gift wrap, patterns for licensing or developing marketing materials and branding.
In between managing my online shops and designing to a client brief, I also ensure I keep creating and adding new designs to add to my print-on-demand shops like Spoonflower, Society 6 and add to my portfolio to make available for licensing to companies such as Azutura!
How do you juggle freelance work and being a parent?
It’s much easier now that our two daughters are at secondary school and my working day has stretched a couple of hours. They both usually have homework when they come home, so I can carry on with my work too.
When they were younger, I had the hours they were at school to work, which is why the 9 am start has been crucial. Once the girls were off to school, 9 am on the clock felt like a starting gun at a race to try and fit in as much as possible before 3 pm.
When you are a working parent, freelance or not, it feels like you develop a new skill to cram as much as possible into each hour to get things done, as there’s no time to waste and so much to do. I’ve noticed that in my good friends too when they became parents - juggling became a new superpower. Working parents are all heroes in capes as far as I can see.
Can you tell us about your creative process from the inception of an idea through to the finished piece?
When I get a spark of an idea, I usually scribble something down - a note or a doodle, in my notebook or on a scrap of paper. Then, I gather those scraps of notes, along with any research, colour palettes and inspirational images so that when I’m ready to set to work and develop a design they are all ready and waiting for me.
I tend to start with line drawing on paper with a black fibre tipped pen and then use those drawings to colour digitally. At the moment, that tends to be mostly in Illustrator because I find it easier to quickly apply my designs to so many different design formats.
One of the positive things to come out of lockdown and having the girls at home is my youngest daughter has helped me learn a trick or two on Procreate. Consequently, I have been using my iPad much more and either use it as a sketchbook or to photograph and then colour up drawings before exporting them to illustrator.
You create bright and colourful designs - can you tell us a little about your use of colour?
When I started creating my own collections of designs, I wanted to make sure they were bright, cheerful and all the sort of things I wanted to surround myself with. I love flowers and always plant lots of bright spring and summer bedding plants each year because, even on a gloomy, rainy day, those brilliant colours shine through. That’s what I want my work to feel like - a pop of bright, playful colour in a gloomy, serious world!
Life is too short not to see and enjoy the bright blooms!
What inspires your work?
I am very inspired by the nature that surrounds us. I love living in the South West and that influences me a lot.
When I’m not designing, I’ve found learning gardening not only helps with getting inspired to design but also helps me plan and run my design business and creative process. There are lots of similar disciplines involved. For example, planting seeds (ideas), feeding and attending to them, but most of all, learning to have masses of patience to wait for those seeds to bloom, even after all the hard work and attention, you have given them.
A lot of your work features animals - if you had to choose, what’s your favourite type of animal?
All woodland animals fascinate me. We live close to lots of woods being so close to the Quantock Hills. That said, spotting a hedgehog makes me very happy and popping a little prickly friend into my designs somewhere always makes me smile.
Then again, I feel the same way about rabbits, badgers, foxes, hares and owls - please don’t make me have to choose between any of them!
Don’t worry - I won’t. So what career would you have pursued if you weren’t an illustrator?
Before I went freelance, I worked in advertising agencies in client services. After I graduated with a degree in graphic design and illustration, I struggled to find work freelancing. The simple truth is, I was very naive about the business side of design which wasn’t covered well by the course I studied.
Having specialised in illustration in the early 1990s, I had very little experience designing on a Mac, so I couldn’t work in a design department. So, I found my way into a creative industry as a ‘suit’ rather than as a ‘creative’. That turned out to be a great way to learn all the skills I needed to set myself up confidently as a freelancer and survive - especially dealing with marketing, contracts and the legal aspects of design.
So to answer your question, in the past, I had to pursue a different career path in order to gain the skills needed to succeed in the career I have always dreamed of doing.
What advice would you give to an aspiring illustrator?
Keep creating, have patience and create some more. Put your work out into the world and then create some more. Whilst you are waiting for things to happen with the work you have put out into the world, create some more and put that out into the world and keep going like this.
Perseverance, practice and patience are all you really need to know. You may need to do other things to get by whilst you are going through this process, alas that’s reality, but that makes you no less an illustrator, designer or artist.
What’s the future looking like? Any big projects on the horizon?
I’ve recently been working on some new collaborative projects for new products which will, fingers crossed, launch when the shops reopen. Meanwhile, whilst I wait to see that happen, I am developing new products for my online shops, portfolio and putting them out in the world and seeing what happens
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