FUNNY FACES


As an award-winning illustrator, Howard McWilliam tackles everything from children’s book projects to topical political cartoons for The Sunday Telegraph and The Week. Here he reveals his seven steps to success when you’re drawing on a deadline


I


stopped working traditionally about six years ago. It was the pressure of deadlines that made me switch – I think it would probably take me two or three


times as long to complete a commission if I still used acrylics. Nowadays, I begin with a pencil sketch on paper


and then scan it; everything else is done on the computer. I use the programme Corel Painter but I am trying to ape the traditional style I used to work with in acrylics – I still paint from dark to light. I use a large Wacom tablet with the ‘soft brush effect’ nib on it, which gives it a spring, as if it is a real brush. I find it helpful knowing how a real brush would respond in certain situations.


1. FIND A MOTIF


“I begin by looking for reference images online. I used to work in editorial so one of the aspects of that job was thinking of an image or a photograph to illustrate an article. It was a similar process really, just searching for a motif in the piece that could be illustrated. One of the traps into which I used to fall was trying to think of some really clever way to illustrate every point within the piece. Editors often want you to just find one very simple aspect of the article and hit it with a visual sledgehammer, so to speak. I was trying to be too complex and I’ve learnt to hone it down to something simpler.”


54 Artists & Illustrators


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