An Interview with Autumn Whitehurst
Editorial work for magazines and newspapers is the life-blood for many illustrators, allowing unique opportunities for showcasing new approaches and working methods. What is your take on this aspect of the industry and why is it important for you to participate in editorial illustration?
AW - Editorial work is generally an illustrator's playground. Though it doesn't pay anywhere nearly as much as advertising work does. I find it to be the place in which I evolve. The clients are less inclined to define your approach so it's a great opportunity to really push yourself into fresh territory. This is very important to me because I have less and less free time in which to do work that allows me to explore my creative options.
You appear to have a very labour-intensive working method, could you describe the process, both conceptually and practically, in making your work?
AW - The very first thing I do is lay out my sketches in Illustrator because it allows me to distort the elements until everything feels harmonious. The rendering work is done wilh Photoshop brushes, much like a painter would use paintbrushes, although painting digitally demands a different kind of precision due to the nature of the program. I then use photo references to help me understand how light wraps around the body, but beyond that it's up to my imagination, and much of my effort goes into making these figures long and sleek.
As far as concepts go, I respond to assignments with my intuition. If I have to think about it too hard, then I know that I've taken the wrong approach and that the illustration will be dead if I attempt to finish it. It's usually a particular kind of emotion that I'm after and the technique that I'm using lends itself to that. Highly narrative work is difficult to achieve because rendering the skin so heavily sets a kind of pace throughout the image that must be maintained. Even in an environment built up with line-work, everything needs to be very tight so it can be extremely lime-consuming. This has been my motive for creating a second body of work that is simpler in its execution and this is what I'm Slowly working towards.
Illustration can bring a different viewpoint from photography to a subject when used in a magazine. Your work sits quite firmly in the middle of these processes, at least in visual terms; how does that affect your interpretation of the brief/assignment?
'Editorial work is generally an illustrator's playground. Though it doesn't pay anywhere nearly as much as advertising work does, I find it to he the place in which I evolve."
THE GUILTY BRIDE
HOW CAN A GIRL RAISED TO STAND ON HER OWN TWO FEET LEARN TO STAND BY HER MAN? RACHAEL COMBE ON BECOMING A WIFE
s It so wrong to want a cakc plate? What about matching cake pans, an electric lund mixer, and a double boiler? Is ihat, like, wrong! Oncc you have all that gear, is it so wrong to spend a whole afternoon baking a devil's food cakc with matshmallow frosting thai requires you to stand over the stove with die mixer 011 high speed, splattering boiling-hot corn syrup and egg whites all over yoor ibrearms? Is it wrong to then go out to three different stores to find die special litde Cadbury chocolates (hat look like robins' eggs diat they sell only at Easier and 10 arrange them In a flower pattern on top of your magnificent cakc, which rcsrs upon its sparkling |xx!estiil? Is it wrong to then take pictures of the cake and spend a good five minutes just gazing at it, joyfully, reverently, imagining the delight of your dinnei guests when they get a load of your magical, wondrous, unbelievable cake?
Because when I did this a few weeks ago and plopped it down on the table after dinner—voili!—and my boyfriend. Q„ announced that I'd made it from scratch, our guests just looked at me blankly for a moment before someone said, "Uli, since when did you become Southern?" Then they all laughed. I blushed. It was not limv I'd pictured the moment. I tell as though I'd been caught enacting a dirty fantasy.
And actually, 1 had been: You see, O. isn't my boyfriend anymore...lie's my fiancd. We're getting married in August. The cakc plate, the cake pans—all wedding gifts. And the role I was so eagerly trying on that night? Gracious hostess, princcss bride, devoted wife. Nothing IVe ever done has given me more of a thrill or caused me more shame.
i don't know which is worse: the baking or the wedding. Crowing up under the tutelage of women who had only recently had their consciousness raised by Betty Friedan et. al„ I was comtandy reminded to avoid the sinkhole of domesticity. "Never learn to cook, girls,'' one of my friends' motheis used to warn us. "Because if"you do. that's all you'll do for the rest of your life." Still, that doesn't fully explain my discomfort. With college, graduate school, and 10 years of a publishing career under my belt. I'm unlikely to find my option* reduced to a skillet and a spatula anytime soon.
And while "Consumerism before feminism" could easily be the motto of the exploding domestic porn market and the wedding industry (or as O, calls it, the Marital Industrial Complex), that's a battle I've been fighting (and losing) with myself for years. Barneys would be a lot poorer and Planned Parenthood a lot richer if I always put my
AW - I have to consider what I'm committing myself to in the initial stages because of the time involved in rendering the flesh, but there is also the pleasure of being able to take it a step further to create something that is almost like a fantasy, and this is liberating. I was concerned for a while about how close to photography some of the images were becoming, and wondered if it defeated the purpose of using illustration to accomplish what I was trying to achieve, but a friend pointed out thai retouching a photo to such a degree would involve a lot more time than I was investing and that made me feel better about it.
By their very nature, magazines - and particularly newspapers - are only in the public eye for a short space of time and they have to relate to fashions and trends in image-making. How do you maintain an awareness of current design trends and keep one step ahead of the competition?
AW - I can't deny how influential excellent work is in that it sets a standard I'd like to meet, I work the only way that I know how so I don't think much about trends. They seem a bit dangerous, because to follow them could end in career suicide once the industry decides to move on. It's very important to keep evolving my abilities and I find that this happens more so in the editorial work.
Please give a brief outline of your intentions when making illustrations for this sector of the industry?
AW - I just want to make something as beautiful as I can within the given deadline so as to grab the readers' attention. Most of the commissions that I've been receiving are somehow fashion-related, so at the moment I'm concerned with creating images that have sex appeal. I want them to really sing, to be compositionally solid and ideally to suck the reader into a space Ihat feels like a dream.
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