Did you know that my art teacher, Mr. Spencer, once finished my coursework for me, because the deadline was looming and I couldn’t get the drawing right?
We had to copy a realistic drawing of a woman, by Roy Lichtenstein.
I was never good at copying other people’s work, or drawing realistic portraits.
A few years later, a different teacher told me off for drawing a red blood cell in the margin of my A-Level Biology textbook. I was hoping to prompt a little smile while she was marking my coursework - but instead, I prompted a big red circle around my little drawing of a blood cell (also a red one).
(Obviously she’d never watched Erase una vez el cuerpo humano (Once Upon a Time… Life), the 80s French educational cartoon.)
All of this, together with all my Cs in Art should have squashed forever the little desire I had in me to draw. And yet…
Self-Expression takes Different Forms
Almost a decade ago, when most of my creativity was being channeled into business-related work, I started to draw.
Ok, I’ll be honest.
The desire to draw came from a practical need: I couldn’t find the right stock illustrations to complement my blog posts.
I wanted comic-strip type illustrations.
I wanted abstract images.
I love abstract performances and, when creating theatre, I loved to move in ways different to those I’d experience in real life. (Maybe that’s why I’ve ended up doing Pilates, obsessing about getting right moves with no literal meaning.)
Stick-men type cartoons were also becoming more than acceptable in marketing and business books. Great, I didn’t need to be able to draw “properly” in order to illustrate a concept.
I’d recently gone through a visual rebranding of Virtual not Distant, and had ended up with little people cartoons - with no faces. Someone said to me, “Your work is all about strengthening relationships and being human, but none of your illustrations have faces on them.” Another acquaintance said, “Your website is very nice, but it doesn’t tell me much about you…”
That was all the encouragement I needed.
I got out my Remarkable and started drawing little illustrations for the website and, working hand in hand with my graphic designer friend Kate, we boldly plastered the site with my illustrations.
I’m sure it “filtered out” (corporate-speak for “put off”) many potential clients, but I’d already decided not to use any more stock images and my cartoons had made their way into my client proposals and my presentations.
A few years later, as my heart started to move away from the business space, my drawings took an even more abstract, child-like quality, and Happy Daisy emerged. Colourful and, oh-so-simple.
Just like the little red blood cell that made its way into my coursework all those years ago…
Have I ever told you that I once met the creator of Érase una vez... tv series? Wonderful man. I said to him he'd had a massive impact on the lives of an entire generation of children in Spain.