The Royal Opera House (Case Study)

Covent Garden

My working relationship with the ROH has been prolific since 2016. I have drawn for their Education Department based in Purfleet, Thurrock and Covent Garden, London.

Getting inside the skin of the ROH and understanding their ethos in connecting with new and young audiences, through an extensive educational out-reach program, has been instrumental to my success as the central illustrator for this team. My experience in teaching and my broad range of commission work aimed at young people, coupled with a London upbringing of opera going, music and theatre, have prepared me well for this challenge.

The ROH are a bastion of high quality in the arts. My drawings seek to reflect this with an original but consistent attention to detail. My strong graphic style provides an edge. Characters are not sweet or cute but maintain a contemporary newness. I wanted my drawings to inspire a connection between tradition and the now: accessible and engaging to modern audiences, whilst in touch and symbiotic with the ROH gravitas. I seek to deliver quality.

The Artwork is for use in ROH printed classroom resource books; posters; flyers and web links. My graphic design skills – in page concept; layout; character versatility; iconography; logo design and typography – have been fully deployed. Whilst working in the latter stages of each project with a free-lance graphic designer, both my abilities in Adobe Photoshop and my constant clarity in conceptual oversight, have proved essential in maintaining the signature clean aesthetic that I crave.

Each project consists of a design brief and face to face meeting. Then research into the opera, production, back stage or concept to be captured in illustration.

Concept drawings are submitted mid stage for discussion and approval. These drawings are often in pen outline only.

Once approved, I meticulously hand render each illustration to equal and secure each line, thus maintaining the signature hand-drawn quality of my artwork. Only at this point do I scan each image, creating a digital file for each. This allows me a great freedom at this third stage in the design process. Working in Photoshop to compose, colour, rescale duplicate etc. in order to produce the ultimate image.

These final digital files are resized and made print ready to send to the client.