Introducing: Katherine Coulton

We thought it was about time we introduced one of our newer members to the Drawn in Bristol collective, Katherine Coulton, who creates beautiful narrative children's illustrations employing a unique mixture of traditional digital techniques.

We talked to Katherine about her latest projects, inspirations and illustration ambitions to get an insight into her enchanting work.

Give us an insight into your working process...

Although I use both traditional and digital media in my work, I always start with drawing, even when I'm working on a story.  My latest picture book project came from sketches of old circus photographs - the characters grew out of my sketches, and the story grew out of the characters.

What do you think your dream project would be?

I imagine the illustrators working for Pixar have it pretty good!  I've always been jealous of Alan Lee and John Howe, the Lord of the Rings illustrators, too.  Getting to illustrate a world-famous fantasy series, and then work on a block-buster movie set too?  You don't get much luckier than that!  But really, I would be quite happy writing and illustrating my own picture books, and perhaps making an interactive e-book as well.

Do you have any new projects in the pipelinw which you're particularly excited about?I'm going travelling this summer for three months, which I suppose is rather a general life project, but I'm treating it as a creative one as well.  It's good to flex my drawing muscles now and then, so I plan on recording each day with sketches which I'll be posting up on my Instagram account, here.

We couldn't feature Katherine's work without including some of her beautiful black and white images, which you can see fully animated on her website.

Tell us a bit about one of your current projects...

I've been working with a company at the Bristol Games Hub over the past few weeks called Pretty Digital.  I've actually been working on some 3D artwork for the new indie game they are developing, 'Lux and the Shadowmaker'.  It's a very interesting and artsy game, which has been partially crowdfunded.

Although a slight departure from her usual projects, Katherine has been creating assets for the game, such as a 3D acorn (a very useful thing to look for in the game, we're told) and a beautifully constructed birdbath to go in the walled garden.  She has lots more objects up her sleeve as she gets more familiar with the software.

Amazing, thanks Katherine!

To see more of Katherine's work, take a look at her Drawn in Bristol portfolio here, or keep up to date with her projects on her blog.