The last 43 years…
I must have completed thousands of illlustration commissions since 1981, and I can’t possibly show them all, or even the ones I like best. What I want to show here is the story, a journey with the landmarks which signposted the progression of a career.
The 1980s
1981
When I left college, a designer – previously visiting lecturer at Maidstone College of Art – got me my first real job in the outside world. She was designing the cover, and she wanted my work.
It felt incredibly important. I was doing a book cover for Faber & Faber.
It was a cover illustration for a debut book, 3 stories by Adam Mars-Jones.
One of the stories was about The Royal Family contracting rabies from the corgis..
1982
Commissioned by New Scientist, this was the first job I got for myself. Using myself and my flatmates as models, this was definitely the direction I wanted my work to go at the time, so I also used it as my first business card.
Over the next couple of years, I started getting more work from magazines like Women’s Journal, Honey, and quite a supply of small projects from Oxford University Press.
1984
I wasn’t yet earning enough to live on when Oxford University Press asked me to provide a sample for a seriously big project. A book cover and 37 inside illustrations.
I struggled with the sample, well into the small hours, in despair and cold at 3am deciding that whatever I’d done was the best I could do, and gave up any idea that I would get this one. Yet I did…
It was a huge opportunity: I had to make this brilliant. I was going to blow them away.
I’d find the perfect location for every single image and draw it from life. So the 24-year old me and his sketchbook sat up a tree, used mum, dad and my friends as models, and the house and street I grew up in as the basis for this dog-centred world.
Each image would be flawless and have interest and humour wherever the reader looked.
A review of the book in the Guardian in the UK said that “illustrator Andrew Bylo had clearly enjoyed romping through” the book.
Me, that was actually me!
1985
I was very aware however that my time-consuming detailed style was not cost-effective when it came to the modest fees paid by some magazines. You don’t get paid more just because you happen to spend ages doing the work.
I looked to my sketchbooks for inspiration. I drew quickly in those. Then I should also draw quickly for commissions: whenever I showed my folio, I directed commissioners towards this natural sketchbook style.
So I felt very privileged when I was asked to go to travel writer Colin Thubron’s house and draw him for an article for ‘Departures’ magazine.
My mum had one of his books and I’d read that: I recall my mixture of self-confidence with ‘Blimey, this is a really well-known author.’ We talked of his travels in Russia, about my Ukrainian father, and I drew several drawings, finally selecting this one.
1986
However, I also needed to work in colour – there was a whole market I knew I could fit into that I just wasn’t reaching. But I didn’t want to simply ‘colour in’ line drawing.
Again I looked to my sketchbooks: how did I paint from life when left to my own devices?
Commissioned to produce an image of Covent Garden for an advert for Church’s Shoes, I simply went and sat in Covent Garden and did what came naturally.
I was now getting into the world of advertising and design, and these jobs paid you much more.
1987
But I couldn’t just paint everything from life, especially when clients wanted generic scenes.
And if I couldn’t get decent reference – which was a significant issue pre-internet – a loose style was perfect for conveying mood without being specific.
This one image, commissioned by Hoverspeed for a brochure cover, seemed to fit the 80s Zeitgeist, and as a result, work suddenly started pouring in.
Illustration was fashionable, clients had the cash to spend, and I was now working all hours and late nights to ridiculous deadlines.
The 1990s
1990
The phone rang on a Friday just before New Year. The conversation went very like this:
“Hi, I’m the art director for The Listener. What are you doing next year?”
“Not really sure, I mean, I’ll be working. What are you thinking of?”
“Would you like to illustrate a regular weekly feature by foreign correspondents?”
“Sounds great, yes please.”
“OK, the first one needs to be done by next Tuesday. I know it’s New Year, sorry.”
And so it went on for the whole year, commissioned Friday, deliver work Monday.
1993
I illustrated the restaurant feature in GQ magazine for over a year.
This one was Anthony Worrall-Thompson’s restaurant in Queensgate, London.
I would be sent to a different restaurant every month to do what I did best. Stand in a corner and paint.
They were mostly big names; The Meridien Piccadilly, The Connaught, The Ivy, The Roux Brothers & Marco-Pierre White but a good few special smaller places too.
I was even served petit-fours personally by Marco-Pierre White…
1994
New Scientist was always an adventurous commissioner of artwork, and a pleasure to work for.
They gave illustrators a free rein to interpret and illuminate an idea from a slightly different perspective.
With a brief on biodiversity, what immediately came to mind was my childhood recollections of encyclopedias which showed all the life in the air, land and sea.
1995
Never be surprised by what comes your way, a challenge is mostly always fun.
This for instance, a re-telling of 5 classic tales with illustrations for each story aimed at engaging younger readers. They particularly wanted a contemporary style full of brightness and energy.
I just had fun. I modelled as much of it as possible using photos of myself (in a wig in this instance).
1996
Point of Sale in Beers, Wine & Spirits for Safeway Supermarkets nationwide.
This style of travel-based imagery remained the backbone of my workload since the mid-80s.
1999
It’s the nature of it that you get asked to do pretty much the same kind of thing again and again.
The challenge is always to try to keep your style moving on, at the same time not deviating too much from what your client might be expecting.
The 2000s
2000
The Image for Wimbledon 2000.
The client demanded this precise viewpoint and composition.
While keeping the image fresh and loose, it required more detail than I’d now become accustomed to providing.
It was a challenge – for me at least – to provide a rough. And this went through with several rough stages and micro-changes prior to artwork – a thing I’d been lucky to avoid for the previous decade or so where clients (mostly) had been happy with whatever turned up on their desks, usually bypassing the need for a rough.
Here’s how it was used as the poster image for the Millennium Championships and of course I got to go to Wimbledon to be briefed and shown around. Lleyton Hewitt was the man they were talking about at the time. I watched him play.
Of course I enjoyed the experience, but I wasn’t actually interested in tennis then.
It was only after I started playing tennis about 5 years later that I realised what a brilliant game it was.
2002
It’s weird when commissioners ask you to do something you just don’t expect.
In this case, ‘Garden & Gun’ magazine in the USA decided I was exactly the right person to illustrate an article on charities who prey on donors’ guilt.
Smiley wolves in Santa’s clothing was my solution, in ‘my style’.
As it was such an odd one for me, I wondered if they actually liked it.
Though in my experience, clients always contacted you immediately when a thing wasn’t right – it always began with the phrase: “we’ve just received your artwork…”
2003
Calendars and seasonal imagery are a big deal in Japan.
I’ve done a few in my time for the Japanese market via my agent in Tokyo – here are a couple of typical examples for 2 different clients.
2004
I did 2 posters for Transport for London, this one based on Mile End Park, and another to depict London Gardens.
The work was completed to the client’s design specification, unfortunately, they changed the poster design and available image space after the work was completed.
Consequently they simply cropped the bottom off the image – which had led the eye in and provided depth. They also adjusted the colour considerably from the original – so the composition and colour balance as printed is just plain wrong.
Though things like this can be really disappointing to you as the artist, you have to remember that actually, the client was happy, and absolutely no-one else will notice or know.
2007
Commissioned for P&O cruise liner Ventura through a specialist art consultant.
I’d worked with them before in the early 90s, at that time providing 12 artworks for premium cabins for Swan Hellenic vessel Minerva.
This was one of 6 to be printed on canvas as cabin art throughout the vessel and of course I went to St Ives to paint.
But when I got back with what I’d done, the art consultant said, “Yeah, very nice, but you’ve got to realise these are for cabins with no f*****g windows, they’re like f*****g prison cells, what I need you to do is whack up the colours, just imagine you’re painting St Ives on acid.”
Which I duly did. Complete re-paint. I didn’t take any acid though.
The 2010s
2011
My ideal job.
And my longest-standing client.
I’d first worked for this client in the mid-80s when the owner had just bought the mill premises in Gloucestershire, again in the early 90s as they broadened their range for the home baker.
They were looking to add further products to their range.
Just come down and paint, they said – we’ve a cottage on the premises, you can stay there and you can borrow the Mercedes if you need to go into Tetbury.
I did some 15-20 paintings, from which we selected 3 images that met their requirements.
2014-2023
I started working for this Japanese client in mid 2013 for the 2014 launch of a new clothing brand ‘Dessin Untitled’.
The launch image had to reflect an aspiration to ‘The Hamptons’ lifestyle. I would be commissioned to produce 4 illustrations per year for the foreseable future, used as point of sale instore, advertising, print & web.
And that’s exactly how it turned out – the longest client collaboration of my career, lasting until 2023.
The images reflected their target market on their global travels.
These are the very first and the very last images spanning the 9 years I worked for them.
This was a very demanding client. Every element was art-directed: composition, content, colour, sometimes down to Pantone specification – even the nature of a brushstroke. We often went through as many as 6 rough stage amendments before it was as the client envisaged.
My job was to make this appear effortless.
2021
An unknown number came up on my phone: though fully expecting an unwanted marketing call, I noncholantly said to my wife “That’s some fancy London design group giving me some work.”
Funnily enough, it was. Lewis Moberly – who had first commissioned me in about 1984 for the very first 3 flour packs for a then new organic flour mill in Gloucestershire – were updating the product range once more. The client wanted me to come down and paint onsite to provide imagery for 3 new packs.
It was January, it was snowing, the country was in Covid lockown, but they wanted me to come down as soon as possible.
I insisted on written permission to travel stating that the work could only be done on location. I was the only guest in the one hotel in Tetbury that was open for ‘business travellers’. Me.
Me, lucky to be doing what I love best.
2024
For all the urgency to complete the work in lockdown, the new range didn’t actually hit the shelves until 2024.
But who am I to argue with Shipton Mill’s core philosophy?
“A time for everything, and everything in its own time.”
It really does make a very nice loaf…