Summer Show: Illustration

Illustration

A simple, colourful graphic showing a black man and white woman sitting back-to-back while smiling and looking at mobile devices.

Worlds of Visual Creativity

Welcome to the Pick ‘n’ Mix exhibition that celebrates the culmination of three years’ work by the BA(Hons) Illustration students. 

The show highlights the wide diversity of creative practice within the Illustration discipline from concept art, character design, children’s books, packaging design, editorial, advertising, and graphic novels. 

Come and view the range of commercially relevant art created using a wide range of media, both traditional and digital, 2D, 3D and moving image, and gain an insight into contemporary illustrative practice. Browse portfolios of experimental and client-focused artwork created with innovation and individualism ready for the world of visual creativity. 

Staff Team
BA(Hons) Illustration

Class of '24

About Us

Alice Patterson

Alice Patterson is a London-based illustrator who strives to make work that makes people happy. She uses both digital and traditional techniques to create fun and playful pieces that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. A cat enthusiast, her work often features cats in human-like scenarios where they can be seen enjoying a cup of tea or celebrating at a birthday party. Her work spans many different areas of illustration such as editorial illustration, greeting cards, and stationery design.   

Colourful digital art showing the influence of papercut; a pink apple with a small heart cut out sits above a smiling blue and pink caterpillar; the background is yellow.

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Alice Snow

Alice is an English artist currently living in Wales. Going by her pen name Eleanor Quin, she creates dynamic and colourful illustrations. Working with both digital software and traditional pen and paper, she observes and captures real people and creates vibrant and compelling snapshots of their daily lives. Her influences include anime and indie rock music and these occasionally inspire and inform her work. 

Steps lead uphill between green banks and fruit trees.

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Amy Thomas

Amy Rachel is an illustrator from Swansea. She is a fun loving, caring character with great ambitions to create beautiful artwork in all mediums. 

She enjoys creating reportage illustrations and her attention to detail is apparent in all art especially her architectural pieces which also highlight her unique line work. Her artwork is primarily based on her travels and various places she enjoys exploring across the globe. She prefers to work traditionally, by sketching on site, and further developing her ideas in the studio. 

Detailed ink line drawing showing an arch or gateway covered in patterned tiles.

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Anais Gauci

Anais Gauci is an illustrator that specialises in character design and concept art, creating stories and worlds to be explored. She has a keen interest in relationships and how they evolve over time to lead the narrative and develop her characters. She appreciates and adores the ideas, illustrations, and original concepts used in different media, particularly video games and animated movies. Anais is inspired by a range of genres, from fantasy and sci-fi to horror and the macabre. Working mainly digitally, she also uses traditional methods such as pencil and water colour.  

Digital art showing a griffin-like creature resting in a forest, apparently watching over two smaller but similarly fantastical creatures.

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Blaine Henderson

Blaine, aka Very_Blank_Canvas, is an illustrator who creates mixed media characters and illustrations. His love of experimentation allows him to explore both traditional and digital forms of art, expressing his passion for mark-making using a wide range of media. His inspiration is derived from various sources including both Eastern and Western cultures, ranging from manga to abstraction and impressionism. Through his research of semiotics, Blaine aims to convey meaning and a subtle narrative/theme in his illustrations and character concepts.

Surreal artwork showing a purple tree with a sun and a moon in its canopy; swirling brushwork overlays soft blocked-in colours.

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Chelsea Morgan

Chelsea is an illustrator who uses watercolour and ink to create lively, fun illustrations. Her work ranges from picture books and licensing to reportage. She has a love of storytelling which is evident even in her wedding event illustrations as she creates a narrative from start to finish to give guests a unique keepsake to remember their special day with their loved ones. Her portraits of wedding guests really capture their personalities, as do her picture book characters. 

An ink-and-watercolour illustration of three women in smart frocks.

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Chloe Booton

A lover of watercolour, Chloe Kathleen Booton paints the surreal with elements from the Art Nouveau period. Raised in the Rhymney Valley, she explores the use of flowing, organic lines and natural elements with her figures, creating decorative images that bring together beauty, symbolism and emotion.

Watercolour showing the head of a young woman in profile with long blonde hair and a white wing in place of an ear; a decorative green frame can be seen in the background.

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Ellie Rehmatulla

Tired.Ellie is a Swansea-based illustrator, who works predominantly with acrylic paint pens and fine liners. A keen interest in symbolism adds depth to her images, whether editorial or narrative illustrations. Her work, although imaginative, has an authenticity that draws inspiration from dark literature, personal experience, and observations of people and places. 

A pen illustration showing a yellow-haired young human with oversized eyes reading a book; a fishtail, a large clockface with Roman numerals, clouds, stars, and bluebells all appear in the background.

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Evan Elias

Evan Elias is an illustrator based in Swansea. His bold and colourful designs are defined by their graphic, geometric style, creating a flat, two-dimensional world. Evan’s practice is rooted in taking a minimalist approach, prioritising shape and composition in an effort to simplify his designs. His characters live awkwardly in their clunky world and can be found burdened with indecision. Or sat in chairs too small for them. 

Digital art showing a chicken in a nest surrounded by eggs; the style uses few colours and simplified shapes, perhaps showing the influence of Flat Art.

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Kaitlin Richards-Tang

Kaitlin is an illustrator who loves playing with emotion and atmosphere in her work, to create imagery that will resonate with those who view it. She has a particular love of nature and animals (particularly cats) and her illustrations, from narrative to editorial pieces, embrace this. She primarily works digitally, often utilising ambient lighting and intricate flowing shapes to guide the eye through each piece.  

Digital art showing a woman in profile sitting in the middle of a circle: bands of red, yellow nad purple represent the earth; radiant yellow, pale grey and white clouds represent the sky; plants grow up the sides and overlap the edges of the circle.

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Kaleb Slade

Kaleb is an artist who works digitally in the comic and graphic novel genre, filling the world with all sorts of cute and colourful characters. Taking inspiration from eighties Shounen Manga and cryptids they aim to create works full of extraterrestrial whimsy that also help foster compassion and understanding through their narratives in the hope of making the world a brighter place.  

Digital art showing a green hand holding a cartoon polaroid; in the polaroid a little green alien stands smiling between two humans in a New-Mexico-style desert landscape.

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Kate Joseph

Kate Joseph is an artist from Swansea, South Wales. She uses traditional sketches with digital Risograph brushes to create striking, colourful and bold paper-cut style illustrations. Inspired by her love of animals and bright colours, Kate’s work is highly decorative and her characters can often be seen bursting through the borders of her  art. She enjoys exploring the complexity of human emotions in a fun and relatable way. 

Paper-cut style illustration of a tiger set against a dark blue background interspersed with little explosions and stars; the front paw and tail of the tiger overlap the edge of its square frame.

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Link Fisher

BlueSquid.png, aka Blue, is a character-based illustrator who focuses on creating narrative driven characters. It is important to Blue that a character’s design reflects their personal story and setting. With worlds ranging from a magical supermarket to a bleak dystopian city with a societal decline, Blue is keen to explore wide range of themes within their work. They are inspired by video game series and the related concept art. Blue is a digital illustrator, using a pencil-like texture within their work. 

Digital art: at night in a forest, a pink-haired girl wearing a yellow coat puts her finger to her lips; a white cat walking beside her looks nervous.

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Louis Burrows

Louis Burrows is a Welsh illustrator who takes his inspiration from his love of old school video games, books and films. This can be seen in his character designs, backgrounds, and creature designs. Louis is predominantly a digital illustrator and, as a concept artist, has a keen interested in character design. The one thing he wants most from his work is to put a smile of people’s faces.  

Digital art: a young male superhero in a white suit and red cape in a style showing influences from comic books and anime; to his right is a larger reproduction of the superhero as a white line drawing on an orange background.

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Neve Morgan

Neve is an illustrator based in Wales. Greatly inspired by concept art and world building, the main focus of her work is character design and narrative illustration. Although she usually works digitally, she likes working traditionally too and is experimenting with lino printing. Her use of textured brushes and overlays is a strong feature of her work.  

Illustration of a young woman with flowing red hair.

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Nia Hopkins

Nia Hopkins is a Swansea-based illustrator with a passion for character design. With a wide range of inspiration, from the animal kingdom and phobias to mythology and video games, she works digitally using Procreate to effectively realise her vision. Nia is narrative driven and loves telling stories with, and through, her characters.

Digital art: over a dozen disembodied blue-grey hands reach towards or grip the head of a blonde young woman.

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Nico Wayles

Nico Wayles (aka Kalahuso) is a Nottingham-based illustrator who works mainly digitally. Her fondness for using fun and bright imagery draws in people of all age groups. Nico’s inspiration comes directly from the fantasy world which she spends her free time exploring, whether through films or sitting down for a session of Dungeons and Dragons. 

Digital art: a young woman with flowers in her red hair and a neo-medieval long-sleeved dress.

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Rosie Banks

Rosie Banks is an illustrator who explores the world of picture books and visual storytelling. Being heavily influenced by the books she read as a child, she enjoys the concept of educating young people and encouraging creative thinking. Her traditional style reflects her love of children’s books and the impact they had in her own childhood. Using both digital and traditional media, she likes to design wonderful worlds with fun characters. As well as writing and illustrating her own stories, she focuses on subjects that empower and enlighten young people.

Digital art: tall bare tree trunks at night with two small blue houses nestling on platforms below the canopy; text reads Deep in the forest a tree stood so tall.

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Sammy Turner

Sammy Turner is a trans nonbinary illustrator based in Swansea who focuses on character design, narrative illustration and animation. Their creations primarily showcase digital depictions of both natural and anthropomorphic animals engaging in crazy adventures. These are accompanied by a blend of serious lore-based backgrounds that explore LGBTQ+ and disability topics. 

Their practice involves indie animation which they aim to use as a means of inspiring aspiring animators and illustrators. Their goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to produce one’s own show without the backing of a major animation company by utilizing a vibrant, lively and cartoony art style reminiscent of the early 2000s. 

Digital art: happy anthropomorphized animals sit round a table by the sea; the table is laden with art materials including sketchbooks and paints; two seagulls watch from the background.

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Sophie Haggett

Sophie Haggett is a product design artist and illustrator who creates packaging and advertising for products that interest and intrigue her. She creates a narrative through original and unique designs that enhance the visuals of the product. For Sophie, product design has always been a way of utilising her passion for art in a way that tells a story. Sophie uses a mixture of watercolour, ink, and Procreate to create her vibrant illustrations. 

Digital art: a bottle of gin with the label reading Adfail Mam Strawberry and showing a woman in stiletto-heeled boots, her body replaced by a large strawberry.

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Thomas Cole

Tom Cole is an illustrator based in South Wales who enjoys creating visually striking creatures, characters and rich worlds inspired by his love of fantasy, mythology, and folklore. Working traditionally and digitally to produce artwork that communicates emotion and depth whilst injecting an exaggerated style serves to accentuate the artist’s creations and breathe life into them. Tom is working towards a career in visual development for media. He is influenced by TTRPG rulebook art, concept art, graphic novels, fantasy maps, and anything that features a dragon.

Digital art: in a lightning storm at sea, a monstrous sea snake hisses up towards a furry pterodactyl.

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Viktorija Elertaite

Vik’s (aka ConsideringEyes) work is heavily influenced by graphic novels. Often found daydreaming of other worlds and the stories they tell, they find inspiration in the work of other artists and everyday life, twisting and shaping concepts to make them that bit darker. The media ConsideringEyes uses to achieve this varies from traditional such as ink and watercolour to digital, often combining them to create striking pieces. Their work can be described as dark, moody and slightly unhinged with desaturated colour and a focus on detail and textures.  

Linocut influenced art showing black tree trunks on a grey background; a solitary figure in red moves away from the viewer along a path through the trees.

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