Discover LRS artist Trina Dalziel’s favorite things to illustrate!

Today we’re taking a look at LRS artist Trina Dalziel’s favorite things to illustrate. Take it away Trina…

I’ve worked as an illustrator since the mid 1990s and I’ve been represented by Lilla Rogers Studio since 2007. I’ve loved every commission they’ve ever found for me! They have a talent for getting a good fit with clients’ projects and artists.

I’ve illustrated hundreds of magazine and book projects over the years. I thrive on the challenge of finding a clear, clever visual solution to a text.

I love to create beautiful images and I work a lot on lifestyle, health, and women’s magazines.

I enjoy finding solutions for difficult or sensitive subjects.

Above: The Washington Post – Illustration for an article on ways to manage picky eaters

I like to make sense of complex information but in a soft, feminine way.

For this reason I love to work on “how-to’s”.

Left: illustrations for Woman’s Weekly

Below: My eye in real life tends to find beautiful vignettes amongst the everyday, and this translates into how I compose little spot illustrations.

Illustrations for Better Homes & Gardens — Dog washing, baking soda and sofa spots

I was fascinated by the atlas as a child and would spend many afternoons poring over it by the fire.

I love illustrating maps as I enjoy the process of capturing both the subjective ‘feel’ of a place plus objective information in one image.

I also relish the opportunity to add hand lettering, which I adore producing.

Right: Illustration for The Washington Post

Above: Packaging for Waitrose

A move from the city to the countryside a few years ago means I’m able to observe the changing seasons and to walk straight out into nature every day.

For the first time I have my own garden to grow flowers and vegetables in and I feel these up-close observations have fed into my work in recent years.

Left: Illustration for Breathe Magazine article “The Slow Season”

For commissioned illustrations, I work in Procreate which gives consistency in the process needed when working to tight deadlines.

For my personal work however, I’ve been exploring and exhibiting gouache paintings and ink drawings. I’d love to be able to carry over these ways of working into some of my commissioned illustrations in the future.

Left, Above: I’ve set myself a painting project to produce 100 paintings exploring gouache based on photographs I’ve taken. These are scenes from where I live, from Scotland, and the writer Robert Graves’s home on the island of Mallorca.

Left, Below: A page from a concertina sketchbook in pen, ink and brush. I illustrated a trip I made in 2019 to Bulgaria – this shows Sunday streets in Sofia.

Thank you for taking a peek into my process and subject matter. Selecting images and preparing text for this newsletter has been a good opportunity to reflect on what I do and what I’d love to do more of.

You can see more of Trina’s work at her LRS portfolio page here.