Our Speakers Corner warm welcome Designcollector’s friend and long lasting collaboration partner from New York – artist Sara Blake (ZSO). She is going to speak about her recent project “100 Girls”
SARA BLAKE
Illustrator, New York, USA
Website: http://www.hellozso.com/
Project: Illustration series “100 GIRLS”
What is your project about?
Right now I’m working on a series of 100 Girls. It’s exactly what it sounds like: 100 portraits of 100 girls. For a while, almost half a year, after being totally burnt out from client work of portraits I thought I never wanted to draw another person in my life. I thought I would stick to abstraction and nature. But recently I think I rediscovered something about why I started drawing girls in the very beginning, so I’m doing it all over again to the extreme. By doing 100 pieces of the same thing you begin to focus less on the subject matter and more on process and form. It’s like each piece will be a continuation of the last and it just becomes a long monologue. They’ll all be numbered chronologically even though I’m so tempted to do it by preference. I can’t even begin to imagine where I will end up. I’m excited and scared.
What was the main challenge you have faced?
I think when I first started illustrating I really had no idea what I was doing. I was really just trying things out, experimenting and playing out of a need to make things. I’ve also always had work commitments outside of illustration, so finding the time to truly focus without distraction and to put in the necessary time to develop a voice has been a continual challenge.
Have you client, you and the audience got a satisfaction from it?
I think this project is just for me. No clients. I hope people like it when I exhibit it, but I can’t think about that when I’m making it or I’m doomed from the start. You can’t be worrying about what other people want when you are developing your own work. You can worry about if the client likes it later if you are asked to take that style you’ve created and apply it to a brand or brief. But right now I think it’s most important that I like it first. Maybe that’s completely selfish, but that’s why I started drawing in the first place—privately in my journals for no one to see but me. Besides I’m my toughest critic anyway.
