Hampshire Constabulary, Families Day - Jun 7th
It’s Monday, April 28th 2014. I’m at the very cool Pitfield, a vintage popup shop in central Winchester for a live version of the popular twitter networking event #HampshireHour. I often find at events like this it’s a race to get through as many people as possible to find the pot of gold, whilst remaining interested in the many data analysts and commercial vehicle finance representatives. It’s usually highly likely I’ll find someone who is in need of my skills as an illustrator ... they just take some tracking down! This is exactly what I found when I got talking to Dawn, a graphic designer from Hampshire Constabularies magazine, frontline. They were very keen in jazzing up the publication and we all know that that’s what an illustrators job is. Obviously I didn’t hang around in bringing out my trump card, the fact that my family have over 100 years combined experience in the Hampshire Police force. Funnily enough this publication featured a fair amount in my life before the chance encounter at #HampshireHour. Whilst at university I attempted give the magazine my individual touch by creating a whole lot of artwork in a mock commission that I hoped would make its way into the mag for real. Unlucky on that occasion but fast forward 8 years and here we are!
Every Year Hampshire Constabulary has a family day at their training college in Netley. They often try to find something a bit different to draw in a crowd, especially this year as they were celebrating 175 years of the Hampshire Police. So my job was to draw an existing photo from their archives to turn into a classic, life size, carnival cut out. Unfortunately it wasn’t as straight forward as it sounds as the original photo was fairly poor quality due to being taken in 1889 …they just didn’t have the megapixels. Thankfully I am well versed in using a bit of artistic licensing.
I certainly was impressed with how it turned out when I got to see the final drawing in the flesh….. and put my head through the hole. As a freelance illustrator you never know what exciting jobs you are going to get, this was certainly a break from the some what normal editorial work.
