Hannah Lock’s illustrations stand out for their vibrant colors, if nothing else. Working both digitally and traditionally, using colored pencils (mainly Faber-Castell polychromos pencils), her pieces vary and include landscapes, animal portraits, as well as human characters.
“I used to use a lot of ink and watercolor,” she recalled in an interview with Catapult, “then I felt like I’d reached a dead-end with how far I could take the media. I did some experimenting with different media within different projects at university.” According to Lock, it was while studying at the Cambridge School of Art that she began leaning towards colored pencils.
“When I was working on Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Erl King,’ I came across this way of working by accident—as I tried to get some of the feeling from the story into the mark-making with the colored pencils,” she explains. “I think my style has developed since then, but I still try to carry that emotive mark-making with me on different projects.”
Now based in West Yorkshire, Lock works as a freelance illustrator with her clients including brands like Intercom, Catapult, Bulletin Magazine, and the Covent Gardener. Each piece, whether personal or commercial begins with research and some sketches in her sketchbook. Once the final sketch has been chosen, I move onto the final piece,” says Lock. “Sometimes I start with a loose, faint sketch, and then go on to draw the final on top. Sometimes I just start with a blank piece of paper and work from there.”
Take a look at some of the finished results:
