Trina writes:

“Hi Lilla

Here are jpegs for a Rhode Island Monthly double page illustration.

It was for an amazingly poignant piece of writing by Ann Hood – about her teenage years spent wishing to escape her home and after years of travel her return…and how Thanksgiving with her family is now so special. It’s actually the type of writing that is so vivid and visual it almost doesn’t need illustrating…but don’t want to do myself out of a job :-)”

See more of the Rhode Island Monthly issue that Trina’s illustration appears in here.

I love this piece. Simple and pretty storytelling. – Ashley

Trina writes:

“Hi Lilla

I thought some of your readers from London and near by might like to hear about the Caterham Vintage and Art Fair which is on Saturday September 17th from 11am to 5pm at Soper Hall in Caterham, Surrey.

I will have a stall selling paintings, prints, ceramics and cards.

There is more about the fair here and also on my blog.

As well as vintage clothes and art stalls there will be tea and cakes, a tombola and live music!

Looking for strong work for your campaign, magazine, or project? Below, we’ve collected some great examples of past successful advertising and magazine projects.

SARAJO FRIEDEN | Target
Here, illustration is combined with photography for impact.

DIANE BIGDA | Random House
For the Shopaholic books

TRINA DALZIEL | Healthy Lifestyles Magazine
For an article entitled, “Transform your Self”

Trina writes:

‘Hello
Thought you might like to read this. It was for the blog of a lovely woman, Deborah Henry-Pollard, who I met last week at a workshop on selling your product as a craft/design person.”

Trina Dalziel is a freelance illustrator who has created work for clients including, in the UK: Mini Boden, Cico Books, Duncan Baird Publishers, Health Service Journal, HarperCollins, Hodder and Stoughton, Marketing Week, Mitchell Beazley, NHS, Nursing Times, Red, Runners World, Sainsbury Magazine, She, World Wildlife Fund. In the USA, client include: Air Continental, BlueQ, Body and Soul Magazine, Boston Globe, Chronicle Books, Delicious Living, Family Circle, Land of Nod, Madison Park Greetings, Real Simple, Scholastic, Spa Magazine, Time Asia, Yoga Journal She is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Wolverhampton, Southampton Institute, University of Central Lancashire, Middlesex University, University of the Creative Arts Maidstone.

In your professional life, what is the single best thing about what you do?

I think it’s probably getting paid for answering a brief and finding a visual solution for a client, and yet being able to put a lot of myself into the work.

The other thing that is great about my job is that it’s so portable…I could in theory be living anywhere in the world…. in reality I’m currently in a slightly grotty bit of South London…but the knowledge that I could up and move and I’d be able to take my job with me makes it bearable!
Do you have a creative hero / heroine and if so, why?
I think the people I admire most are those who achieve longevity in their careers and who manage to make a good living whilst maintaining a healthy work/life balance. In these hard times that’s enough to impress me!

I’d just like to move to the countryside with my boyfriend to a house overlooking fields and have a wood burning stove, a studio and a dog. And to be able to continue working on projects I love. People who have led such lives are rarely heard of so rarely feature as creative heroes and heroines.

I’m currently applying for funding to instigate an oral history project where I intend to interview women illustrators who were working pre 1980 about their working lives, commissions and the combining of domestic and work life. Hopefully if I manage to get the project done I’ll have some new heroines!

What piece of advice do you wish you had been given at the beginning of your career?

“Be bold!” Though in reality even if it had been said I might not have been ready to hear it at the time!

Maybe also “It’s not rocket science!” I think even now I sometimes hold off starting new projects or exploring new opportunities – for example I’m keen to expand into applying my work to ceramics and fabrics and to also start up an e-newsletter – but I often feel there is some “secret” information I don’t yet know so I hold back when really I should just take the leap.

If you hit a creative block, what is your top tip for getting through it?

If I have an illustration commission and I can’t think of any ideas I go to one of my visuals files full of allsorts of printed ephemera – magazine cutting, postcards, flyers, Satsuma wrappers, found old photographs from European flea markets etc and just enjoy myself looking through for half an hour or so. I don’t worry about or focus on the brief. Then I take myself away to the kitchen or outside – away from my desk and then ideas just seem to come to me. I think “inspiration” balances on a fine line between on one side knowledge, preparation and research and on the other play and letting your mind fly.

And finally, for fun, if you were a shoe, what type of shoe would you be and why?

Perhaps felt pixie boots with hidden steel toecaps!

See more of Trina’s work here.

Monday: Suzy Ultman’s updated portfolio

Trina writes:

“Hi Lilla

I’m sending you some new work. They are ink drawings and mostly about A2 in size. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve ever worked this big and this messy before. It’s easy to blame external blocks – years in a small rented flat with the proverbial British carpets, not enough space on my desk once my computer, scanner and A3 printer are on it, “What would I then do with work so big?”, “They won’t fit under my scanner”, “How would I get that to the art director”….and on and on.

It may be something more subtle though – “artists work big but I’m an illustrator”, “To do a big self initiated piece I ought to have something serious or special to say”, “beautiful paper needs something good on it and it might not turn out good!” or maybe with my ingrained Calvinism “That is just too much fun to consider”!

Now with a bigger space and floorboards and a table in the kitchen for craft projects all the reasons seem silly. But maybe it isn’t so much gaining physical space but just allowing myself mental space to play. I’ve always known, in theory, how important it is to play and experiment as a way to moving your work along but somehow it always gets moved right down my list of priorities to somewhere under “send out mailers” or “clean bathroom” and time goes by!

I’m really loving working this big and the spontaneity of using inks and water. Sometimes starting with a very light pencil outline, but mostly just starting. But with years of drawing elements on separate bits of paper – easy to throw away if not right and then working in Illustrator where the delete button is there as a constant comforter it is a shock when I realise changes can’t easily be made! But I actually find it quite relaxing if I accept that this is part of the process, finding ways to reshape and change elements as “mistakes” happen and accepting I can’t control everything as I go along. If I get to a stage where I can control the results and everything turns out as expected I guess that’s when I should move on to some other technique!”

Friday: Studio Carta Grand Opening

Trina Dalziel writes:

“Hi, Lilla

I’ve been having lots of fun at Cosmo China in Bloomsbury, London recently painting plates and mugs and egg cups and butter dishes etc with this circus theme.

It developed from the circus design I did in the spring as part of a collection of circus themed repeats. And they, in turn, came from a little sketch in my sketchbook done in the winter. I love the way ideas, themes and projects can grow and in doing so change form.”

Monday: Allison Cole – new work in the October issue of Parents Magazine

Trina writes:

“One morning a few weeks ago while on the island of Skye we went to an otter haven. To get there it was several miles on a single-track road with breathtaking views across to the Scottish mainland. It was just across this stretch of water that Gavin Maxwell, the naturalist and author, lived during the 1950s and where he wrote his famous book about otters, “Ring of Bright Water”.

There was a wooden hut on a hillside overlooking the sea with big windows, seats and binoculars. We waited and waited and waited, looking and scanning the sea and the beach. I so wanted to see one I started to think I did – every ripple on the water or long bit of seaweed on the beach. The closest I came to an otter was the beautiful carved wooden one in the hut!

Eventually we gave up and as we walked back through the forest to the car I imagined what it might be like to meet a standing up clothed one possibly offering us hot chocolate from small cups. This drawing came from that wishful hope!

I think I sort of like otters all the more for being so reclusive and elusive.”

Friday: Allison’s fun sock design for Sock it to Me

Trina writes us:

“Hi Lilla,
This was a really straight -forward job – they knew what they wanted when I was commissioned – a drawing of a woman looking confused with the words describing her symptoms placed around her. Ultimately I love the challenge of coming up with ideas but equally sometimes it’s a nice change when the idea has been decided and I just have to focus on how the image will look – colour, line, composition, etc. to convey the message.”

Friday: Helen’s Mod Kitchen

Trina writes us:

“Hi, Lilla! This was an illustration for Midwives Magazine. The article was about monitoring women with diabetes during pregnancy. It wasn’t about massive interventions or anything just treading lightly but being aware…hence the stepping stones. I liked the idea that the three trimesters of pregnancy can relate to three seasons so I showed the woman passing through from early spring to late autumn.

The family I used to be a nanny for in London have a beautiful series of photographs in a frame of the mother as she progressed through her first pregnancy….and I remember being as fascinated by her changing hair cuts and seasonal outfits over the nine months as her changing shape!”

Friday: Susy Pilgrim Waters’s work at Crate & Barrel