•PACKAGE AND PRODUCT
I suppose that the bulk of my work over the last 15 years or so has been illustrating food to go on packs, or designing the packs themselves.
Supermarkets place tons of work with design agencies and design agencies often don't employ enough in-house artists to carry out the demand of work.
I've also found myself being pushed into a narrower gap of being a 'photorealistic' illustrator of food and agencies certainly don't have many of them on their books, so luckily they turn to the likes of me.
Every couple of yers the same range of children's cereals is re-designed and freshened up to compete with other supermarkets and the big branded products so there is a constant supply of work.
Trouble often is that it's wanted so quickly that it's impossible to accept any other jobs whilst rushing flat out to turn round 24 cereal packs in 2 weeks or 50 medication boxes in 10 days.
I remember being terrified when I got the job to illustrate 36 packs of bulbs for Asda. Glass and reflections were something that I'd not quite cracked at that time but having collected just about every pack I could lay my hands on, taken 100's of photographs of bulbs and bottles I realised that it wasn't as difficult as I'd first imagined. In fact glass is quite simple to illustrate, so long as you don't make it too complicated.
My accountant usually has a wry smile when filing my expenses as there's always chocolate samples, beer samples, fruit, trifle, cakes, juices, toilet rolls etc etc, all legitimate purchases for photographic reference.
Please feel free to click on any image to enlarge but remember all are strictly copyright.©
