Jonathan Woodward’s an artist, a nomad and a soon-to-be father. The man behind Zero2Illo.com, a blog for aspiring children’s book illustrators, Jon shares his passion for creativity and his good business sense.
Woodward grew up in Nottingham, the home of Robin Hood. (Hmm, no wonder he was drawn to children’s literature.) He was known as the “arty one” in school, the kid who would always be asked to draw the posters for school plays.
After studying Graphic Design in college, Woodward worked as an in-house designer before going freelance in 2006.
To Woodward, freelance means freedom to explore. He and his wife rented out their UK home in 2007 and have been on the road since, living in Panama, Buenos Aires, Grenada, Toronto, South Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong and Dubai. The internet makes running their marketing and design business from anywhere possible.
Jon, how do your travels influence your illustration style?
I wouldn’t say that they have directly influenced it from color or style perspective based on the different cultures that we have seen (although that is an aspect I really love about the travel), but having seen so much beautiful wildlife and nature around the world, it has definitely influenced the subject matter that I illustrate.
Tell us about some of your most recent illustrations.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is the piece that led to my current collage style of working. I’d been flicking through magazines and noticed how much the hair on a particular advert looked like tree bark–it was one of those light bulb moments!
The idea for the final illustration came from a song I was listening to at the time that coincidentally tied in with my idea for the tree (and my love of crows!).
The Phoenix is from a recent set of four illustrations based on mythical beasts. Here I was trying to pare down the collage to a bare minimum–to create a bolder, simpler illustration style that might be more suitable for a children’s book.
I enjoy finding textures of a particular surface that are perfect for conveying a totally different texture in the illustration. This happened with the feet of the Phoenix. I found a picture of a model wearing a sparkly bejeweled top and instantly knew that I had to use it for the feet.
This piece was done mostly in traditional collage, with just a bit of detailing, adding the white eye and pumping up the colours a little in Photoshop.
A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing is where I first started using acrylic paint alongside the collage medium. It’s a technique born out of necessity, as I was struggling to find a magazine clipping to represent the wolf fur, so I started working into the collage with paint. I got a bit carried away in the end and ended up painting the sheep’s head and zipper on top of the collage, too.
This was an interesting piece personally, as I had previously been creating collages digitally using scanned magazine clippings, but I realized that my choice of texture ended up being a lot more interesting if I did the collage traditionally using whatever I could find within the magazines and materials I had. I don’t think I would have chosen the printed text to represent the sheep wool had I been doing the piece digitally.
Who are some of your favorite illustrators?
My illustration inspirations and interests are quite diverse, ranging from artists like Jon Foster, Dave McKean and James Jean all the way to Shaun Tan and J. Otto Seibold.
What is your ultimate goal as a children’s book illustrator?
I initially thought I wanted to go into comics or sci-fi and fantasy illustration for book covers, but the theme and content of my illustrations always seemed to gravitate back to one of my other passions: wildlife and nature. If I was only ever allowed to illustrate creatures great and small for the rest of my illustration career, I’d be a very happy man.
Thanks for sharing your wonderful artwork, Jon!
If you’re interested in learning more about the ilustration and design work of Jonathan Woodward, visit his blog Zero2Illo.com and follow him on Twitter at @jonwoodward.
8 comments
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May 27, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Sean Hodge
Jonathan is a great artist. He did an awesome video tutorial for Psdtuts. Looks like he has a diverse background of various artistic mediums that combine in his work. I like the thoughts between how tradition and digital effect choice of texture, cool stuff! Thx.
May 27, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Marsha Riti
Great interview! I love Johnathan’s blog Zero2Illo.
May 27, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Katherine Battersby
I love collage – it adds so much depth and texture to an image. The wolf in sheep’s clothing it particularly evocative. I’m just about to head over to Jonathan’s blog…
May 28, 2009 at 12:30 am
Kelly H-Y
Wow … very cool! Thanks for the great interview, as always!!! You always find such fascinating and talented individuals!!!
May 28, 2009 at 5:16 am
amypalko
Those illustrations are just stunning – thank you so much for sharing them & interviewing Jonathan, so we could find out the processes behind the images.
May 28, 2009 at 6:13 am
Rosy V
Lovely interview, now I know a bit more about Jon! Cheers!!!
May 29, 2009 at 10:15 am
AZ
This is great work! Thanks for sharing it!
May 13, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Jonathan Woodward
[…] Sorrow, Two for Joy, es la pieza que lo llevo a su estilo actual de trabajo basado en el collage. Comenta Woodward, que mientras ojeaba revistas notó como el cabello en un anuncio en particular parecía corteza de […]