Coming from a fine art background, Louise Boulter has brought along her love of textured surfaces and hand-made marks, and infused them into her illustration work. The work she is doing now is full of narrative and intriguing characters, but you can see her background in expressionist painting is the areas of fine colour and detail, and in the emotional marks on the paper.
We take a look at one of her recent projects that illustrates a series of idioms. We like how her work has a timeless feel of good children’s book illustration, but also has the individuality of her drawing style.
You can see where she has been more meticulous and focused in the details, particularly in in the characters’ faces, but also where she has adopted a freer, more intuitive brush stroke, like the birds in the last image, ‘Snail’s Pace’. She tells us more about her background and moving from fine art to illustration, and gives us a peek at some of her sketchbook pages.
My name is Louise Boulter, I studied fine art at Wimbledon school of art. I am currently living by the sea in Bournemouth, UK.
I have been working as a freelance illustrator for the past three years. I have been involved in fashion illustration, wallpaper design, alongside exhibiting in galleries. I started from a fine art background, inspired my landscapes and abstract expressionism. My work has gradually evolved into a more illustrative format, still with my passion for mark making and textures.
My recent interest has been illustrating old Sayings.
The way I approach my illustration is in two stages, firstly I will draw the image in a black fine line pen, then work with Photoshop using a tablet. I have only been using it for the past year, and have discovered that it has has changed my life.
I had been working with black ink onto paper without combining it with my enjoyment of paint. But through using the tablet it has enabled me a gain a freedom . It never fails to surprise me with the capability of creating such loose marks and painterly effects, which has always been integral to my drawings.
© Louise Boulter, 2012
