I rung up Moira Hey as she had agreed to answer a few questions about her work and working practice. I made notes and below is what I found out from our conversation.
I asked Moira what inspires her and she replied sayng that theere is never going to be one particular thing that inspires her, inspiration is there all the time in everything. She spoke about how her partner works as an engineer and she often finds things that inspire her when she is rummiging around in his workshop. Even dirty and old things can inspire you, she said, sometimes in the way that you want to create the complete opposite of it. She told me how she does not have a favourite artist or designder, as she looks to different designers for inspiration on different projects. She told me about the project she is working on at the moment for which the brief requires her to work very paintily, for this project she is looking at the work of Andrew Hem for inspiration as he works in a very paintily illustrative way.
I asked Moira whether she is happier working to a strict or an open brief and she said that it didn't bother her. She is just happy to be working and producing illustrations. She spoke about how it can sometimes be annoying when clients give a very open brief but when they see your work they want to chnge everything and it can be a bit of a hasstle.
We spoke about how she works and it turns out she naturally works in a similar way to me. We both find it more difficult working in a very linear way and recording everything. Moira said how she spends time just thinking and not producing sketches and then further sketches etc, and this way she produces her best work. She told me that she works in a very abstract way, often starting out very abstract focusing on the mood and feeling of the piece and then later on producing the illustration.
After speaking about working in the industry, I found out that it can be difficult to have a constant income cos work can sometimes be hard to find. Moira said that it is harder to make money now than when she started illustrating 30 years ago. She stressed the importance of self promotion and said that although it is the more boring part of the job (visiting companies, showing her portfolio, working on the website etc) it is vital to continue promoting yourself, even when you are an established illustrator. She told me how important this is and said that you just have to keep going if being an illustrator is what you want to do. She often makes calls to buisnesses to promote herself and her work and she told me that when I get jobs, I should stay in touch with everyone because you never know when they might want more work done.
Moira told me that she finds it hard to promote herself sometimes, so she imagines she is a product and talks about herself in the third person, this way she finds it easier to talk about herself and her strengths.
I asked her about how she got started in the industry and she explained that originally she wanted to do a fine art course but did not get accepted, then she got on an illustration course by chance and from there she went freelance. She told me that because it is hard starting out, she had to find other ways to make money until she had enough illustration work coming in to focus purely on that. Moira had sme advice for me on starting out as an illustrator and she said that training to vbe an apprentice would be very helpful as you get a real insight into the working world. Although she was never an apprentice herself, people she knows from her illustrator group (who she meets up with regularly to discuss illustration and ideas) worked as an apprentice at one point in time and found it to be a great learning experience. She also told me how it is good to work with other people at the start so you have a range of people around you with different qualities and from this you learn a lot. She spoke about how scary it can be trying to get into the illustration industry but you just have to do it, "if you are not scraed, you are not alive", she said.
Mira has never worked for an agency because they always rejected her because her work was too versatile. I found this strange because I though companies would hire people with a range oif different skills but aparently they want people who are good at one thing so they can quickly associate them to jobs rather than having to look through their work. Agencies are just lazy really.
I asked about her studio and working space and she said it is messy, but she always knows where everything is. She told me about her friends who also work as illustrators and she was surprised that many of them work in spotless studios with no mess and just 4 white walls. She told me that she would never be able to work this way as she needs a visual stimulus to work and being in a blank room would just drain her of inspiration.
This talk was fun and informative and gave me a lot of information about working as a freelance illustrator. I did ask her for advice but she said she wasn't brave enough to give me any solid advice and just said that whatever happens I just need to keep going for it, and she told me to stick at my degree no matter what because it is a process of learning that I need to go through.
