Welcome to my
monthly interview feature! I’m so excited to be interviewing all the fabulous
artists, illustrators and designers I’ve meet over the years (both personally
and virtually!) and sharing their artwork and experiences here on Bird Meets
Worm. Look for a new interview on the first Tuesday of every month.
This month I am simply
thrilled to be chatting it up with the super sweet Illustrator/Designer, Flora
Waycott! She creates
charming drawings and patterns inspired by her surroundings, with a fun and
whimsical approach. With a love of travel and a curious mind, she is constantly
inspired by new discoveries, whether it is the shape of a leaf or the contents
of her kitchen cupboard. She graduated with a textile design degree in 2004 and
has since worked as a textile & pattern Illustrator/Designer, with her work
appearing on products from children's apparel to stationery. She currently lives
and works in Wellington, New Zealand. You can view more of Flora’s artwork here.
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| And, oh, it is, isn't it?! Hooray! |
Q:
Of course, your big news of the moment is being runner-up in Lilla Roger’s Global Talent Search 2014 competition and landing a 2-year contract with her
agency. Congratulations!! What are you most excited about? And how do you
foresee this moment impacting your creative career going forward?
A: Thank you Jane! This is such a wonderful
opportunity and I am excited about many things. I am happy to be a part of such
a supportive studio and to be able to ask for help when I need it. It has come
at the perfect time in my career; I was looking for representation for a
while and I wanted to be promoted by my name. I feel so fortunate to have won representation
with Lilla Rogers Studio as I had admired them for a very long time and hoped
that one day I would be considered. I am excited about the exposure for my work
- it helps immensely having an agent to promote your work for you - something
I was trying really hard to do before on my own but it took time away from
making art. I think this will impact my creative career by giving my work
more exposure and hopefully good things will come! I spent the last year
or so working really hard getting my portfolio to where I want it;
showcasing my range and style and I am really pleased that it has got me here.
I am looking forward to working with inspiring people and about what
the future holds!
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| Fantastically elegant holiday vision from Flora! |
Q:
You have a wonderfully eclectic background having lived in Japan, the UK and
now New Zealand. How have each of these locals shaped your unique
illustration/design sensibility and aesthetic?
A: I feel very lucky to have experienced living in
such different parts of the world and the inspiration is different in each
place for sure. I think living in different countries opens your
world up; you connect with lots of different people and it gives diversity
to your way of thinking. This certainly applies to my art as I can
draw inspiration from many sources. In the UK I was very fortunate to study very
close to London so I was able to visit there often and be inspired by the
museums and markets. When I lived in London later on I had all of that on my
doorstep.
It has been such a great experience living in New
Zealand; I had never been to the Southern hemisphere before coming here 7
years ago and the quality of life is just excellent. I love our house by the
sea, it's very calming and peaceful. I have been lucky to be able to visit
Australia and the Pacific Islands as they are of course a lot more reachable
from here!
I feel mostly drawn to Japan as I have such fond
memories of growing up there and go back as often as I can to top up my art
supplies and take lots of photos. I certainly think the
delicateness of my work and the cute characters I love to draw come from the
Japanese side of me; I remember at school I would spend all of my break time
drawing cute pictures with my friends and swapping stickers. I studied at a
textile school for a semester in Japan when I was 21 and I remember how
incredibly dextrous and patient the students were, taking so much care and
pride over their work and spending many hours perfecting their skill.
Every single detail had to be just right. My Mum (who is Japanese) also takes
an immense amount of care in everything she does, whether it is cooking a meal
or looking after her beautiful garden. It really inspired me to really
care about my artwork and focus on creating pieces I am proud of.
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| I'd love to have tea at this sweet table with the adorable teapot! |
Q:
You have your own line of lovely giclee prints, cards and screen-printed
towels. Dish with us about your products, how you produce them, and your
journey to place them beyond Etsy into bricks-&-mortar shops. (Shop at Flora's Etsy store here!)
A: Yes, I have been producing my own little
range for a few years now, it actually started off as a bit of fun as I wanted
to take part in a few craft markets at Christmas time. After I sold them
at some markets, local retailers became interested and starting putting
orders in and now I stock a range of boutiques. I have found social media, especially
my Facebook page and Instagram, to be wonderfully useful for promoting my work
- I have had stockists overseas contact me through it and customers find me
through there. It is sometimes hard to balance everything, as I also teach
textile design at Massey University here in Wellington as well as design work,
so I work on my product range when I have some quiet time.
I hand screen print all of my tea towels
myself in my garage - we have a little set up in there with a tiny screen
printing table we made and some shelves for the pastes. I really like
offering a screen printed item as I love how the inks feel on the cloth and the vibrancy
of the colours. I also screen print some cards and prints in my garage
too. All of my giclee prints and cards are printed at a lovely local printers
and I package everything myself at home. When I get really busy my friends come
over and help me package my items, which is really helpful as it
actually takes a long time to do! It has been great having an Etsy shop as
anyone in the world can purchase on there and I love sending my work off
to many different countries and imagining my items in people's homes. I am so
grateful that people want to buy my artwork.
Q:
Describe your dream project.
A: I have so many dream projects, I feel like I
want to try everything out! I
am obsessed with stationery and would love the opportunity to design a
stationery range for a client - memo pads, sticker sheets, notebooks etc. I was
so grateful when Madison Park Greetings published an advent calendar I did last
year in December as a personal project - and when they did sticker sheets and
enclosure cards to go with them I almost fell off my chair! It was such a dream
come true and I would love to create more stationery items. I also love drawing
food and would love to illustrate a recipe book. This would be such a joy to do
- I love eating and would imagine what all of the recipes would taste like as I
drew the pictures! I could get really creative with this - designing the pages,
adding sweet kitchen utensils, hand lettering... I would enjoy it so much.
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| Awww, shucks!! |
Q:
Tell us a bit about your creative process: how your project ideas are sparked,
what does sketching look like for you and how does it all come together with
color & pattern?
A: If it is piece of art for myself, for my
portfolio for example, I usually go with what I am feeling at
the time. For example, I may suddenly want to draw clothes. Or teapots. Or
herbs. I have these ideas that come to me, sometimes in my dreams! I
am also influenced by my surroundings and what is happening at the moment,
for example the seasons, or what I did today. I can relate to the subject
matter on a personal level that way and I really enjoy it. I always start off
sketching in pencil on sheets of white A4 paper. If I am drawing teapots for
example, I look up different shapes of teapots, what motifs/patterns they have
on them etc. After drawing in pencil I go over everything using a fine
black pen and scan in to my computer. After this I mostly play in Illustrator
to bring everything together - there isn't really a formula for this. I
just get a feeling when I know I am happy with it.
That is what I do most of the time, but recently I have
become very excited about using paint and spend my evenings practicing
painting with gouache. It feels great to actually mix the colours myself and
work with a different medium. I scan the paintings in and work in Photoshop,
separating the elements and bringing the design together.
Colour palettes can be tricky and sometimes I won't
figure that out until the later stages of a design, and other times it comes to
me straight away.
I like looking at photos for inspiration and also
just going out and about to shops and looking at what's out there.
Sometimes I have an exact colour palette in my head and I know the exact shade
of a colour I am looking for. It's really weird and I will sit there picking
the colours with the colour picker in a hurry so the colour palette
doesn't go from my mind! One colour I find really difficult is green. For
some reason I find choosing the right shade of green really hard. But I rarely
struggle with pinks and corals. I wonder if anyone else feels this about
certain colours? I definitely have my favourite colours that I love working
with, and recently I have been trying to break out of this cycle and use
colours I wouldn't normally.
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| Tea, anyone? XO |
Q:
Describe your most perfect Sunday.
A: My most perfect Sunday would be in
Autumn, when the leaves are turning red, it's not too cold and the sun is out.
I would get up early and have breakfast with Nick, we would have bacon, avocado
and tomato on toast with tea. If we are in Japan, we would head to a flea
market in one of the shrine grounds and browse through old kimonos, fabrics,
teapots, wooden sculptures and old postcards. After lunch we would go for a
long walk - we usually go for a Sunday walk - just strolling thorough the
neighbourhoods chatting about everything. I would then curl up in a sunny spot
in the house by the open fire (we don't have a fireplace anymore but always
wish we had!), next to our cat Shima, with a cup of tea and my sketchbook and
draw anything that takes my fancy. We would then have dinner whilst watching Midsomer Murders or Poirot or some other murder mystery I am obsessed with! Perfect
day!
Thank
you so much, Flora, for chatting it up with us here at Bird Meets Worm! We simply
adore you & your artwork!