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Interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel

Interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel

An Interview with iLlustrator Trina Dalziel

Trina Dalziel is a freelance illustrator who is represented by Lilla Rogers Studio.

Her clients in the UK include: Mini Boden, Cico Books, Duncan Baird Publishers, HarperCollins, Hodder and Stoughton, Sainsbury Magazine, She, World Wildlife Fund.

In the USA, her clients include: Air Continental, BlueQ, Body and Soul Magazine, Boston Globe, Chronicle Books, Delicious Living, Family Circle, Land of Nod, Madison Park Greetings, Real Simple, Scholastic, Spa Magazine, Time Asia, Yoga Journal

She is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Wolverhampton, Southampton Institute, University of Central Lancashire, Middlesex University, University of the Creative Arts Maidstone.

For this interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel, Trina was interviewed by Deborah Henry-Pollard. Trina told us: “Thought you might like to read this. It was for the blog of a lovely woman called Deborah Henry-Pollard, who I met last week at a workshop on selling your product as a craft/design person.”

Trina Dalziel HDplus week1 Make Art That Sells Interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel

Art by Trina for our course Home Decor PLUS.

In your professional life, what is the single best thing about what you do?

Trina says: I think it’s probably getting paid for answering a brief and finding a visual solution for a client, and yet being able to put a lot of myself into the work.

The other thing that is great about my job is that it’s so portable. I could in theory be living anywhere in the world … in reality I’m currently in a slightly grotty bit of South London … but the knowledge that I could up and move and I’d be able to take my job with me makes it bearable!

Do you have a creative hero / heroine and if so, why?

Trina says: I think the people I admire most are those who achieve longevity in their careers and who manage to make a good living whilst maintaining a healthy work/life balance. In these hard times that’s enough to impress me!

I’d just like to move to the countryside with my boyfriend to a house overlooking fields and have a wood burning stove, a studio and a dog. And to be able to continue working on projects I love. People who have led such lives are rarely heard of so rarely feature as creative heroes and heroines.

I’m currently applying for funding to instigate an oral history project where I intend to interview women illustrators who were working pre 1980 about their working lives, commissions and the combining of domestic and work life. Hopefully if I manage to get the project done I’ll have some new heroines!

newIMG 5563 Make Art That Sells Interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel

Some of Trina’s editorial work. See more here.

What piece of advice do you wish you had been given at the beginning of your career?

Trina says: “Be bold!” Though in reality even if it had been said I might not have been ready to hear it at the time!

Maybe also “It’s not rocket science!” I think even now I sometimes hold off starting new projects or exploring new opportunities – for example I’m keen to expand into applying my work to ceramics and fabrics and to also start up an e-newsletter – but I often feel there is some “secret” information I don’t yet know so I hold back when really I should just take the leap.

If you hit a creative block, what is your top tip for getting through it?

Trina says: If I have an illustration commission and I can’t think of any ideas I go to one of my visuals files full of all sorts of printed ephemera – magazine cutting, postcards, flyers, Satsuma wrappers, found old photographs from European flea markets etc and just enjoy myself looking through for half an hour or so. I don’t worry about or focus on the brief. Then I take myself away to the kitchen or outside – away from my desk and then ideas just seem to come to me.

I think “inspiration” balances on a fine line between on one side knowledge, preparation and research and on the other play and letting your mind fly.

TrinaDalziel CrystalPalaceMap Make Art That Sells Interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel

Art by Trina for Hot Markets for Your Art Part B.

And finally, for fun, if you were a shoe, what type of shoe would you be and why?

Perhaps felt pixie boots with hidden steel toecaps!

We hope you enjoyed this interview with illustrator Trina Dalziel. See more of Trina’s work on her website here.

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