A warm welcome for the stunning and lovely work of Jo Cheung. Jo's work is a unique and delicate blend of collage illustration and digital art, that is combined with a delicate touch and deft hand to give the free and easy beauty that characterises her work. Kaleidoscopic and colourful Jo is inspired by nature and brings a fresh open feel to her work that although containing many elements is finely balanced. We love her, you will too, read all about her here!
Who are you:
Hello there I'm Jo Cheung and I'm a freelance illustrator currently living in London. I come from a small town called Doncaster, in South Yorkshire up North, which has nothing apart from a really good tea room which does the meanest Club sandwich and hot chocolate. There's always little old ladies in there as well.
I make collages and then retouch it on the computer. I like making images of animals.
What do you do:
My part time work is a tutor. And so the free days my mornings start with two cups of coffee followed by anything from doing work for my own personal portfolio, submitting work for on line briefs and in between that updating my Etsy shop. Although the temptation to procrastinate working from home is that I end up spending more time making cups of tea than doing real work!
I'm a freelance illustrator for Gia London so I design all the email and newsletter banners basically all the promotional material. i designed all the web pages and icons etc for the website and it was a great experience working with them.
When it comes to starting a new piece of work for I do everything in my sketchbook before finishing it off on the computer. I use paper and stickers from my own collection and cut everything out, rearrange it, stick it down with glue or tape, draw over it then transfer it to the computer. I've moved slightly away from figurative illustrations as animals and the natural environment are the main theme in my work.
Since I've graduated about a year ago there are times when I've been busy trying to get things done on time and days where I spend all day making images or just taking product photos for my shop. I like that freedom of not having a proper structure in the week as I'm the kind of person who gets more things done if I just go along with it!
How did you start:
For as long as I can remember I've always been drawing something and on anything! And honestly, I wasn't good at any other subjects apart from Art and erm Sociology. I was actually either going to study animation or fashion design but illustration was for me. Because there's so many things I want to do and illustration crosses various design areas and disciplines there's no limit as to what applications and media you can take on or apply to; so I think my work reflects these interests. And it's probably because I'm inspired by artists who do a range of work like ContainerPLUS and Vault 49 for instance who specialize in typography, advertisement, illustration and art direction....... I want to do everything!!!!!
A Personal statement about you or your work:
Whimsical, naive, fun and playful often depicting a dream like and fantasy environment with rosy cheeked animals.
I haven't seen some of these pieces before Jo, your work is as beautiful as ever!
ReplyDelete