Holly Exley is a modern watercolour artist, based in Essex, UK. Her beautiful illustrations range from food, drink, animals, people, plants and teacups. She studied illustration at Middlesex university, and graduated with her degree in 2010. She worked as a waitress to help with a steady income after graduating, but now works in illustration full time, selling some of her work through Etsy & completing commissions.
Fields and Outlets
Exley mainly gets commissions for editorial illustrations, but has also created art for books, stationary, advertising, and decorative prints.
Outlets and Representation
She used to be represented by the Association of Illustrators (AOI) in 2011, but soon decided that such commitment wasn't working for her. She wrote on her blog that after 2 months working with them, she felt like there was a loss of one-to-one communication between her and the client. Although she had high expectations that the agency would bring more opportunities to work with bigger clients, Holly ended up finding that she as able to achieve this working independently.
The blog post talking about working with an agent can be found here.
Holly shares her work on her website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blog, YouTube, Behance and sells some work on Etsy.
"I believe having a strong online presence and voice is so important for getting your work noticed"
Visual Identity
Exley's style is a very modern twist on stereotypical watercolour art. She uses bright, bold colours, which represent the light and form of the subject perfectly. Her illustrations are realistic, and so make an interesting alternative to photographs on a page.
Although there are many other illustrators who work in watercolour, I feel like Exley's is slightly different in the way that she shows tone and shading. If you look closely at her work, the gradient between light and dark isn't shown as a smooth graduation, but is instead shown in block stages, like contours on a map - each section showing a different shade or colour.
In many of her images, she has said that she likes to emphasise an unusual blue hue, "for example, when I paint skin tone, I don't just see pink or brown, I see all of the colours of the rainbow - blue, purple, yellow, green - it's all there, you just have to look for it" [3]
As she is in the height of her career, Exley is always producing illustrations for clients & works on a very busy schedule. As I follow her on many of her social media outlets, it is not unusual for her to be working on a painting everyday.
Her extensive range of clients that she has worked with can be found here.
"Do what you love to do, do it well, work hard, work harder, be consistent, be consistently nice, and things will work out"
Humour & Storytelling
Exley's illustrations don't usually involve humorous content, but some of her illustrations tell a story, for example she painted a collection of objects that related to Beatrix Potter - this I can argue, tells a story about her life:
Influence
I discovered Holly through her Youtube channel, just before I started my illustration journey at university. Her modern and realistic watercolour paintings inspired me to pursue art at a degree level, and I'm sure will continue to inspire me as I try and find my own illustrative style.
I have always loved the unique qualities you can achieve with watercolour, and hope to experiment with it more during future projects - I'm sure Exley's style and approach will help me with this process.
Breadth
Exley has said that she now only works with watercolours as it gives her a quick way to render colourful, toned images, in comparison to more time consuming methods of acrylic or oil. She is however, always trying to improve her practice in the way that she shows light and shade hitting the object. She also feels like she is interested in colour and shape more than line, which is why painting in watercolour seems more natural than drawing in pen.
[1] https://www.behance.net/hollyexley
[2] http://www.hollyexley.com/Watercolour-Illustrator-About-Me
[3] https://www.cassart.co.uk/blog/watercolour_tips_holly_exley.htm
[4] http://www.creaturemag.com/artist-spotlight-holly-exley/
[5] http://hollyexley.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-me.html
No comments:
Post a Comment