Artist Interview: Christiane Engel

The weekend is here (for me anyway 😉 And there’s nothing better than to kick off a possible breakfast-and-reading-in-bed day with an interview with Christiane Engel, an accomplished illustrator who has done amazing work for editorials, ad campaigns and children’s books!

Name: Christiane Engel
Location: London, UK
Website/Shop: www.desertfriends.com www.etsy.com/shop/chengel
Blog: www.christianeengel.blogspot.com/
Illustration media: digital collage / pencil+acrylic / pen+ink / paint on wood

Tell us a little more about yourself!
Hello! My name is Christiane. I’m an illustrator of children’s books and other things and I like to design fabrics. I’m originally from Germany and I hope to live in a semi-desert climate one day.

Where do you live? What stands out about living where you are, and what is your daily schedule like?
I’ve been living in London for a while now, but in a less urban area with lots of parks, sports grounds and leafy roads.

Sometimes I forget it’s London and when I get off the underground at Piccadilly Circus it hits me that I’ve been living in my own bubble surrounded by children’s books, animal wall-charts and maps of National Parks, and I really need to adjust to get into that fast-paced city mode again. What I like about this place though is that you can find all kinds of things here and that it doesn’t even surprise people when you’re not from here because rarely anyone is!

And when it gets too much I can always escape into my dream world through my illustrations.

My daily schedule is mostly a variation of this: checking e-mails / revising color artwork digitally / sketching on own projects / working on roughs for commissions / going to the library or food shopping / more e-mailing or uploading artwork/ googling pictures of Namibia / work out at the gym plus Yoga or Pilates / re-hydrate / eat in or out / watch TV whilst still sketching or noting down ideas…I have to learn how to switch off.

How did you get your start in illustration?
I studied mainly Animation at a German art school but when I moved to England I ended up making little story books and finally, for my MA, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book series called Louis + Bobo. After I graduated I sent my work out to a few agents and the response was quite positive, that really surprised me cause all I heard were warnings about how difficult it would be to break into children’s publishing. Soon after that I had my first commissions which were in advertising and my first book, ‘Louis+Bobo – We Are Moving’, was published by Chrysalis in 2005.
I still had various day jobs by then and mainly worked on my illustrations at night.

Could you tell us more about your thought process when you start a piece?
I work pretty intuitively and let things fall into place by themselves, it’s what works best for me as I’m not a very left-brained person.
That’s especially the case with my personal work as it’s the things which surround me — either in reality or in my imagination — that flow into the artwork directly.

It also depends on the project, if it’s a children’s book I’m illustrating I always decide on a setting first, for example the Carribbean (like in ‘Knick Knack Paddy Whack’) or the Swiss Alps, so I get to do some virtual traveling. I also write and scribble a lot about the characters that I’m illustrating even if the story was written by someone else, it helps me to visualize them.
When it comes to editorial work for parenting magazines, I can usually draw on my own childhood experiences for most subjects and I ask other people as well about theirs before I make several sketches for the editor to choose from.

What’s your favorite project so far?
I don’t think I have a real favourite, I like the variety of projects I get to illustrate and I’m really grateful for it. A few highlights were the Read&Rhyme Storybook bible which was a year long project, the Affordable Childcare advertising campaign for the Department of Education where I got to draw cheeky kids baking or dancing, and the fun picture book ‘Ooh La La Polka-Dot Boots’ by Ten Speed Press, because I had complete freedom and could invent kid characters in all kinds of outfits. This book was written by Ellen Olson-Brown and is coming out in March 2010.

Do you keep a journal/sketchbook, and would you mind if we had a sneak peek?
I do but not in a very organized way, and I also sketch and write on scrap paper, envelopes and shopping bills and keep them in a huge IKEA shopping bag under my drawing desk. I hope to categorize them one day.

Would you care to share your studio space as well?

I wish I had a dedicated work-space a bit separated from my living space, like an attic with guard-cats or a garden shack with deer antlers, but right now I work from my flat where the living room has slowly been transformed into a studio.

What or who inspires you?
Everything around me I guess in an unconscious way although I don’t see anything ‘London’ in my work. Maybe it will take a few years for it to show up, who knows…

But a few things I can list are: films, nature, folk tales, lino cuts, old signs, old maps, wildlife documentaries, German Expressionists, factual books for kids, geography, lettering, the outdoors, autumn, holiday snap shots or traveling itself and the things that happen, stories in general, social interaction, music with lyrics that put images in my head -especially American Indie/folk/rock.

What keeps you motivated?
Nice comments from people really give me a boost or when someone wants to own a piece of my art or fabric to hang it up in their place or to create clothing for their kids with. And of course it’s particularly rewarding to see that the customers, i.e. kids actually enjoy the books I’ve illustrated. I just found a picture of a boy hugging the Read&Rhyme bible and his mum reviewed it on her blog and he commented on it being pretty like his Eric Carle books! That absolutely made my day.

What’s your favourite tool?
A 2B wood free pencil is pretty much all I need for drawing, I also like these refillable ink pens with a flexible tip, and for digital work my Wacom pad + pen is my favourite as I can’t handle a mouse.

Are you a full-time artist?
Yes, I have been for several years, I was thrown into it suddenly when the whole translation department where I was working was made redundant, which was lucky cause I wouldn’t have had the guts to quit myself. Then I considered dog walking for a while but luckily the commissions started coming in more regularly and it worked out alright somehow.

What advice would you like to give people who are interested in being an artist full-time?
It’s a long process to get there so having money saved up definitely helps. I think you know if you really want to do it, and then you just have to trust yourself and don’t listen to advice too much (mine included) because it will be different for everyone anyway. And there’s only so much preparation you can do, it won’t always go according to plan so being open-minded and flexible is a good start.

Where do you see yourself within the next few years?
Well there’s lots of things that I want to try out creatively, whether that’s doing more paintings or animation, or drawing graphic short stories, making things from my fabrics, but there’s never enough time for that. And location-wise I hope to be somewhere where space isn’t so limited and over-crowded.

What message do you want to send out to people about your work?
I don’t think I’m sending any particular messages but people might see different things in it and maybe, or hopefully, connect with it. I’m sure there’s always something I want to express but if I could do so in words only I probably wouldn’t be an illustrator…

Tell us something random about yourself!
Before I can start working in the morning I need to check the weather situation of a few places including London, Cape Town, my hometown Bremen, and occasionally Berlin and Las Vegas.

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Thanks Christiane! Have a great weekend Pikaland peeps, and I’ll see you on Monday while I catch up on some R&R (and you should too!)