Josh Patterson: Reflections
Hackney, North-East London. It’s a warm, sunny day. I’m getting off the Thomas Heatherwick’s red double-decker. I look around and suddenly from behind the corner of Westgate St a very confidently looking chap holding an iPad Pro in his hand, surfs on his skateboard towards me. That’s Josh Patterson — a London-based illustrator whose work explores a variety of different, ever so intriguing directions such as surrealism, mental health, and NFT.
Defining Josh
Josh, please tell us a bit about your background and how you became a designer.
Josh: Where to start… I’ve always been a natural drawer, always loved drawing from an early age. My dad is actually an illustrator and artist himself so I guess he’s always been my main influence especially throughout my childhood. Throughout school, art and graphic design were always my favourite subjects. I knew that I wanted to take that further to university. I did art and design for my A levels and then went on to do a foundation diploma which again was in art and design. This helped me narrow down what I’d like to specialise in because at this point I didn’t really know what commercial illustration was. As I mentioned, my dad was an illustrator, and I kind of knew what he did but I wasn’t just exposed to the world of illustration the same way. His work was quite centred around packaging illustrations.
When I went into university my course was Visual Communication — basically illustration, graphic design, photography, and animation. The first year I did just a bit of everything. Then year two I chose illustration because I’d been experimenting with different areas of it during the first year so I knew that was the specialisation I wanted to go into. By my third year I had started to narrow down a particular style I wanted to work in, and towards the end of the last year I had already started getting commissions.
So, once I graduated I was quite keen to go just straight into freelance work. I definitely found the promotional side of things quite challenging — posting my work and reaching out to art directors basically asking for a job. The work that I did at the time I definitely enjoyed because I was mainly doing editorial illustration for magazine articles, which tends to be very conceptual. They would give you the article then, you’d read through the article in order to produce 2 to 4 rough sketches before getting into visually reach versions. I did that for about a year and a half, I was still living at my dad’s place during this time and basically illustrating out of my bedroom — it was a quite an isolating way of working and I definitely wanted to be in a more creative environment.
So, I started applying for jobs — more kind of graphic design jobs — because It’s kind of rare to get full-time illustration jobs. I mean, some companies they do have in-house illustrators but more often than not, illustration is something that’s outsourced on a freelance basis. So, I actually got into digital product design a little bit, which got me a job at a mental health company called PSYT. They were a pretty small startup at the time and I was with them for about 5 months. I think, I essentially wanted to be part of a slightly bigger organisation.
I ended moving to a fintech company called YoYo Wallet where I did a little bit of everything being employed as a digital designer. I started off doing marketing design. Later on, a bit of product design, then doing a rebrand of the company. Eventually, I brought my illustrations over to the company and the rebrand we did kind of that kind of fed off these, so our brand became quite heavily focused around illustration. I was with YoYo for about 3 years. Fintech wasn’t really the area I was very interested in, to be honest. I wanted to be at a company that I felt was contributing something positive to society. That’s why I joined Unmind — a workplace mental health platform. The role just seemed ideal because they needed a brand designer heavily focused on illustration. I’ve been with Unmind for over a year now and I’m really enjoying it.
Meanwhile, I still do freelance jobs on the side. Having two jobs simultaneously can definitely be challenging at times. It essentially means, a lot of the time, that I’m working all day and then some weekends. It can be tricky juggling the two sometimes but this past year actually has been quite slow in terms of freelance work, probably because of the pandemic. It seems not a lot of companies are hiring illustrators, or at least I’m just not getting hired at the moment haha.
Radek: What about NFT? I think you’ve focused on it quite significantly.
Josh: Yeah, I have. Initially, I was quite shocked with how much money people were making off work that they’ve maybe already done and just had laying around. But, I think that is a common misconception with NFTs — it’s not really like that at all. When NFTs first came into play, most of its art was related to cryptocurrency or trippy portraits of Elon Musk smoking stuff — random things like that. Then I saw well-established illustrators and motion designers getting into it as well and creating some really beautiful work and being very successful from it. That’s kind of why I saw it as an opportunity to hopefully make a bit of money but also just get a little bit more invested in personal projects as well. I think the good thing NFTs is that it gives illustrators and motion designers a chance to gain some attention around their personal work. Which is often something that they likely wouldn’t get paid for. And yeh, personally, it’s got me more motivated just to do more passion-oriented projects.
Into Josh’s mind
I’m truly impressed by your recent works. I think they look absolutely marvellous. I feel that most of the NFT stuff looks very transactional while there’s a craft to your work, a real tangible passion that makes me be able to admire it. Please tell us about your initial intention behind the project and your philosophy behind its facets — it is all the rationales that had shaped it to its final form.
Josh: Mental health is a quite large topic in my life and is something that I wanted to bring through my personal work. A lot of the artwork that I’ve been doing for NFT has kind of subtle hints towards wellbeing and mental health.
In terms of its aesthetics, I’ve actually been recently getting into concept art, which I think is often seen as quite nerdy, but I really admire the craftsmanship of a lot of these concept artists and I love the compositions, mood, and atmosphere that they create in their work. That mood and atmosphere is definitely something that I’ve tried to aspire to before but seeing this kind of stuff certainly helped influence me.
Radek: Was there any particular source of inspiration regarding the ‘utopian’ vibe of your recent work?
Josh: The whole thing around the visual style with these is that I wanted to create that mood and atmosphere that I talked about through these sorts of alluring compositions. Having these figures and foreground objects helped create a focal point. And then the use of gradients and the textures help to create that intensity in the artwork.
Radek: What about the colour palette? Is there a sub-context incorporated into it or was it a spontaneous, creative decision?
Josh: I suppose a little bit of both. I love illustrations that have a lot of contrast; that have intense, dark, black areas alongside light areas that help define that focal point of the image. The textures that I use are almost psychedelic. They feel quite liquid like, almost like ink in water.
Radek: What about the textures? Did they come from the top of your head or from artists you admire?
Josh: I’ve been using these textures for quite a while now. I should probably experiment with some new ones haha. I feel that a lot of illustrators now have adopted this very vector-based, flat illustration approach. So, that does tend to be a lot of work that ends up looking the same. I quite like to separate myself from that by bringing these types of textures in. I think over the years I’ve just worked up a process of using textures and bringing gradients in with it as well. That helps create depth in the piece. I think it helps bring authenticity, a more organic feel to it.
Radek: What about the silhouettes? How do you look for a reference when it comes to modeling them?
Josh: This is a good question. I guess because NFTs live in the crypto space, there’s a lot of gaming influence there and a lot of the content is very sci-fi-focused. These bold figures definitely come from that source. In terms of the shadow approach, I was actually looking at photography characterised by mood and shadow. You get you very nice intensity in that kind of photography so I tried to bring that into my illustration a bit.
Radek: There’s the artist that your recent work reminds me of — Giorgio de Chirico. Are you familiar with his art?
Josh: No, I haven’t seen his work but I can definitely see what you mean. I haven’t produced any proper artwork yet but I’ve got sketches that look very similar in terms of composition and elements like those arches.
Radek: I think this is actually very intriguing that you utterly unintentionally created something that connects in a way to the work of one of the most admired artists of the twentieth century.
A personal impact
Did you embed any of your personal perspectives into the project — it is your past experiences, observations, or people that you’ve met?
Josh: Over the past year the importance of nurturing mental health has become very apparent to me. It’s not necessarily something that used to think about that much. Speaking to people at Unmind and hearing Unmind’s mission really give a good insight into how to care for your mental health and the importance of it as well. I obviously try to make my work aesthetically pleasing, I try to make it look nice but I do like that there’s this kind of subtle undertone of mental health as well. In the “Reflections” piece for example — the side copy of the silhouette is depicting empathy and acceptance. It’s a symbolism of taking the time to reflect on things, on yourself, opens up more opportunities to be empathic. Which in turn leads to understanding and acceptance. Having that kind of undertone of mental health is an important thing.
“Taking the time to reflect on things, on yourself, opens up more opportunities to be empathic. Which in turn leads to understanding and acceptance.”
Something that I really enjoy when working on my personal work is being able to have the time to pay attention to small details. By the details, I mean introducing gradients, textures, and being very meticulous about the composition. I bring this approach to my day-to-day work even though it tends to be more focused on smaller, more conceptual illustrations. That eventually helps me produce a mix of styles. Nevertheless, being meticulous is the key to my work.
Takeaways
Is there anything that you had learnt during the project that may influence the way you work on your future projects?
Josh: I guess, in terms of the actual project, I don’t think I necessarily learnt anything new. However, being in the NFT space and just seeing the amount of animation in there — even when its something super subtle — made me focus on this aspect a bit in my next project. I think that partly the point of digital art is that you can’t buy it as a print, so I think it makes sense for it to move. So, what I’m actually doing for my next piece is just trying to get a subtle bit of animation in there.
“I think in any creative job it’s so important for you to be constantly learning.”
Thanks to my current company I’ve been doing an animation course which has been really handy. During the animation course, I’ve learnt loads on that. To be honest, I think in any creative job it’s so important for you to be constantly learning. That’s also one of the things that help me keep myself motivated. I feel that if I’m not necessarily growing or learning while working on a project then I just become bored. So, that’s why I’m definitely trying to bring that learning into the NFT artwork that I’m doing at the moment.
Radek: Have you consider presenting your work at a gallery or exposition? Especially, given that your work focuses on mental health thus could help promote the subject.
Josh: I’d like to have my artwork in a gallery. However, I’m definitely someone who gets imposter syndrome. Having all of my artwork up in a gallery and getting people in — I guess I’m afraid that it would be a bit of a vanity project.
Radek: Don’t you think that this is actually the part of our work as artists and designers to not pay too much attention to what others have to say simultaneously letting people judge your work rather letting it gather dust?
Josh: Yeah, exactly. I create artwork so people can see it. I wouldn’t want to just create things and not have anyone see them. But at the same time, I sometimes find something as small as posting on Instagram quite difficult, as you feel like you’re being judged. I also quite often compare myself to others, which isn’t a healthy thing to do. I’m definitely a firm believer that you should do your own thing and not worry about what others think. But that’s easier said than done sometimes.
The amulet
Would you like to present and talk a bit about a tool or an object that has a personal meaning to you and influences your work in a way?
Josh: My iPad is the thing! It’s an iPad — it doesn’t have much of a personal meaning to me.
Radek: So, you didn’t give it a name?
Josh: Indeed, it doesn’t have a name haha. The iPad is actually something that I have only recently bought. It really has helped speed up my work process and workflow. You know, it’s so seamless when it comes to doing rough sketches, sending them over to your computer — it’s made everything really practical. I think It’s also helped improve my drawing skills; I’m more motivated to just pick it up and draw.
One of the main benefits that I’m starting to see now is related to how flexible this tool is. In the past, I felt that some of my characters were quite rigid looking. You know, when you’re drawing on paper it is a bit less forgiving — if you make a mistake you can’t really rub it out as easily as you can on an iPad. So, if I messed up the initial sketch and still went with it and put it into Illustrator and traced over it — as I do — then the whole thing just ends up looking a bit off, a little bit rigid. Now, I’ve got this iPad and I can definitely just refine sketches a lot more. Thanks to that I’ve got the exact proportions that I want and the composition that I want before taking it into the next steps. So, I think it’s been a hugely beneficial tool for me to use.
I’ve got this recurring freelance job. It’s for a company that helps brands come up with new strategies when they’re entering a new market or when they’re evaluating their current performance. They put on these overnight workshops where they split up into teams, and then they brainstorm ideas, how they want to improve their company, and then they give a presentation the following morning to the rest of the organisation. Each team is given an illustrator that curates the meeting and helps visualise their ideas. The illustrator has to put their work together throughout the night to deliver it on time for the presentation. It is a very intense job and the turnover of illustrations is pretty quick so I often take my iPad on those jobs. I use Procreate and the process is a lot quicker on my iPad.
The dream
The final question. If you had the opportunity to work on your dream project — what would it be?
Josh: One thing that I often find really satisfying about a project is just seeing that it in its final form and knowing all the work you’ve done going up to that piece. I think it doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific project but the particular dream of mine I guess would be to have my illustrations to be featured in a public setting for everyone to see. On one of those screens at Time Square or Piccadilly Circus.
There’s this artist that I follow — Yukai Du. She’s an amazing illustrator and animator. I can’t remember what this campaign was for but she created these really beautiful, colourful animations and I think they were up on a bunch of the screens in Time Square. I find this level of exposure very exciting.
I think it’s not necessarily the dream job but a dream outcome. On a more realistic scale, I think a billboard on London Underground or something would be within my reach but I guess you just need to get to the right company.
Radek: Do you think it can come only by chance or you can actually do something to help yourself be signed for this kind of project?
Josh: There’s this company — The Association of Illustrators. They basically help out freelance illustrators with their pricing of their work making sure that they’re not being mugged off. They have the directory of clients and it’s basically a huge list of art directors from hundreds of different companies. The list is categorised so you can find there for example packaging & product, editorial, large campaigns — these sorts of illustrations. You can buy that from them to get in touch with different art directors. I think that if I was to ever go freelance again I’d probably buy that directory. If I didn’t get any clients from it then I would at least be happy for the networking part of it, making new connections.
Chapeau bas!
Thank you Josh for walking us through so many intriguing aspects of your work — immensely appreciated! We wish you tons of new ideas and ever more interesting projects to work on! Hopefully, you’ll come back soon to discuss another project of yours, cheers!
If you’d like to stay in touch with Josh you may follow him on:
Josh’s website
LinkedIn
Instagram
Twitter
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