Gillian Blease

Gillian Blease did her degree in Fine Art at Newcastle University, and for a while attempted to gain a reputation working in this field. She has been working as an illustrator for nearly 15 years, and commented that it has taken her most of this time to reach the point of making a decent living from it. Blease began her career in illustration by collecting and filing images of literally anything she found inspiring. After taking a short course in illustration, and reading the AOI’s ‘how to be an illustrator’ guide, she had the idea of re-doing illustrations for existing Guardian articles, in order to build up a portfolio. She had a fairly slow start, but after six months, did a job for the Guardian, which eventually led to many more.

Her main influences as a fine artist were Andy Warhol, Patrick Caulfield, and Terry Frost, and from looking at their work, I can see how she found it relatively natural to begin illustrating. Blease highlights a trip to Japan as a major influence. She taught English and travelled around the country, noticing and being inspired by the symbolism in Japanese art and culture, and the concept of using simple representation to communicate an idea.

Another major influence are Goya’s etchings; while working at the Whitworth gallery, she wrote an article on his work. His use of empty space and sense of drama stuck with her, something which she tries to use in her own work. Other influences include Paul Rand and Julian Opie; she mentioned how simple Graphic design and a bold use of type inspires her.

Produced in Illustrator, her work focuses largely on shape and pattern. Things are stripped down to their simplest form, and she uses a simple colour palate. Blease favours minimalism, and believes that imagery works better when surrounded by empty space. Through her simple but effective designs, she became interested in pattern, and now sells her work to the Bright Agency for greetings card and textile designs.

The majority of Bleases’ work has been editorials for newspapers and magazines, such as the Guardian, the Daily Express, and Restaurant magazine. She mentioned that the Guardian is good to work for, as the only restrictions are the dimensions. Her worst job was a commercial piece for the Southbank centre, in which she had a complete lack of creative freedom. Some of her editorial work has to be completed within an hour, something which she finds challenging but valuable, because it keeps her from being too precious about her work. Occasionally she will get several editorial jobs on the same subject, and has to find a way of illustrating each one differently. She has begun working in book design, an area that she would like to be involved in more, due to the length of time given to complete work.

She highlighted the importance of being reliable, and also advised us to regularly send postcards to potential clients. I found Gillian’s talk very interesting; I like the way she can diversify to work in several different areas of illustration. She was able to explain her influences very well, and was honest and informative about the ups and downs of the industry. While I am not massively interested in doing editorials, I thought the idea of card design might be worth considering, so iv done some research into the industry, looking mainly at the Greetings Card Assosiation Website: