Blog by London Artist & Fashion Illustrator Elyse Blackshaw
I'm a little late to the party, but hey it's fashion! Happy New Year everyone! It's late January and after a long resting and hibernation period I thought it would be a good time to reintroduce myself to you.
For those who’ve followed me for a while, or for anyone just discovering my work, I’m thrilled to take a moment to reintroduce myself. I am Elyse Blackshaw, a contemporary fashion illustrator living and working in London. My work is ever-evolving but always celebrates colour, texture, and movement inspired by fashion and the world around us. I create vibrant artwork for a range of contexts, from digital media design collaboration. Take a look at my services to find out more!
Here are 5 "Did you know" about me:
I am from Greater Manchester and I am proud of my Northern roots and identity. I can speak for most people by saying that being connected to North and being "Northern" is an intrinsic feeling, an instinct. For me, I feel connected to a working class heritage, living by the hills and the joyous simplicities of life.
Being invited to create a hand painted window in the heart of the city at Cass Art Manchester was a highlight of 2024!
I have been a practicing fashion illustrator since 2014. After graduating from the Manchester School of Art in 2013, I spent some time creating fashion illustrations for friends of friends who had fashion businesses. I was first invited to illustrate at London Fashion week in 2015 aged 23 after being discovered by Noctis Magazine. I love looking back at this work as the illustrations were so fluid and free, before my style had been refined. There is a beautiful charm that surrounds unrefined work.
3. Until 2023, I never felt confident drawing faces. In my previous work, you can see I always used a collaged face. This helped me establish a unique style, but could also be quite limiting too. I attended many life drawing sessions between 2019 and 2023, which helped me gain confidence in drawing live and capturing figures in a short space of time. I attended my first live drawing event in 2022 with no experience. The illustrations lacked my usual pizzazz. 6 months later, I focused on creating visually exciting portraits and had developed my own creative formula for illustrating live portraits. Here is a portrait drawn live at the Selfridges Swap Shop event in collaboration with Loanhood.
4. What challenges do I face as an artist (or just a human being!)? I have always struggled with communicating my full self and personality, particularly on social media. In a world where social media is key for discovery, it is something I have had to try and adapt to. As someone who is both an introvert and an extrovert, social media is something I find really tricky. It find it hard to portray myself online and to strangers. I would say I have always been a social anxious person since childhood and so facing and trying to overcome social anxiety is a constant challenge! I know this is something many people can relate to. I am a BIG over-thinker, so I have has to adapt so that anxieties are something that I feel, but they no longer stop me from overcoming fears or challenges. I take time out of my practice to reconnect with my self, and try not to hold myself to the same expectations of others in the industry.
5. What inspired my fashion collage workshops? These are the most requested workshops I do! Although they are not something I advertise a lot or that are part of my main practice, the fashion collage workshops I have done have been seen on social media, and are regularly requested by schools, colleges and universities. The workshop I designed has this amazing ability to connect students with scrap materials (usually my old drawings and prints, or previous participants work). Although at first glance, the materials are a pile of bits of random papers that are ripped and torn, I absolutely love observing participants carefully choose and select from the options. These amazing figures and ideas are then layered and crafted in real time. Everybody works instinctively, with freedom and experimentation. The workshops were inspired by both my BA and MA research practice and work. My 2013 BA degree show, as seen below, was an installation of giant fashion illustrations collaged from my fabric samples as an alternative way to display textiles for fashion. Then, together with my MA research into how fashion illustration could intervene with fashion consumerism, I developed these fashion figures born from my unwanted artwork. I started saving my development sketches, test prints, and any drawn surfaces I would typically recycle, and give them a second life through collaged fashion workshops. I wanted to inspire students to think carefully about the materials they chose when designing fashion and textiles. Could they use existing materials instead or new? Can they think about how the materials can have a continuous lifecycle? Vibrant and stimulating outcomes were born out of the unwanted scraps of my artwork and of previous participants, so imagine the possibilities.
MA scrap fashion figures 2024 & Manchester School of Art Fashion collage Workshop 2022.
I look forward to sharing more with you this year!
Elyse x
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