Grace Helmer

0:00Ah thanks for that really nice introduction so my name's grace and I'm a freelance illustrator I grew up in Brighton but eventually moved to London study illustration at Camberwell and never really left I thought I'd introduce my work.

0:31And then talk about a few personal projects have been important to me.

0:34So in case you hadn't seen it my work is painting and califor and sometimes quite detailed and textured everything I do is with oil paints on paper people always think it's gouache but it's not my commissioned workers may see for magazines and newspapers online stuff and like cookbooks yeah a lot of stuff for cookbooks and this is from a recent book I did about van Gogh so for commissions they usually I'll draw up a rough on iPad like the image at the top and just figure out colors and composition. And indicate as much as I can like what the final thing will look like for the client and myself and then I can just paint and kind of go off on tangents a bit then.

1:45But then for personal work I often just draw out an image or their composition.

1:53And then just color it in with pain and and try not to use a computer as much just to see where it goes that's this is the process of something.

2:07And then the finished and sometimes they animate stuff too but kind of in a wonky self-taught way like I don't really know how to do it.

2:19So I forgot I did all those transitions and I only really started painting in my last year at uni my family kept giving me oil paints for Christmas and I didn't really have any money so that's why I started using them it seemed like a good fit though for the sort of imagery I wanted to make and paints took away a bit of control over the image because I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes so it's like if you make mistake and you just kind of have to go with it.

3:04And sometimes the mistakes are better than what you planned anyway and my teacher at the time. Actually told me to stop painting I wasn't really working maybe you agree with her.

3:18But I think I just had a feeling like I wasn't there at that time.

3:26But I if I kept my practicing at it then maybe eventually like the images in my head will match up to what I'm painting and after graduating I really needed time to just figure that out.

3:41And it felt agent to go out. And I promote my work and tell people well and get jobs but I needed to just get to grips of painting and make really bad work and just get better and luckily I had lots of friends my course who are kind of like-minded and ten of us got a studio together in Peckham and we ended up forming a collective called day job and having that group of people kind of saved me and helped me keep the momentum going after graduating everyone was in the same boat and we kind of helped each other.

4:21This is our group photo we took from ourselves at the time I don't really know why we did it like that I think we just wanted to make ourselves laugh and we worked on lots of different things like publications and workshops and installations that pick me up at Somerset House and the VNA and Peckham space but my favorite project was one that we didn't actually finish we were all a bit knackered from interning and working actual day jobs and never having days off so he decided to look up a list of cheap places to fly to on the sky scanner and put them all in a hat like we did actually put them into a hat and each pick a place to go to we had to go alone and you can't have been there before.

5:18And then you had to come back and make work about it. And we all had a group message about it.

5:23So we could share when we were there on the trip like what we're up to we didn't end up putting the work together.

5:33But I decided we're like oh yeah I got mostly I decided when I came back that I wanted to catch all these little moments into a comic so I just made it.

5:47Anyway these are some of the spreads from it my trip was really quiet because also is really small I'm really quiet and it was March and freezing so I didn't need any words in it really it was fun to just wander around and experience his face and travel alone which is something I hadn't really done before and just like soaking everything up like this big sponge and then that was sort of the calm before the storm and a few months after that trip lots of stuff happen at once I personally that also sort of changed how sore about everything I got a big animation Commission and decided to quit my job to go proper freelance and also started going on lots of tinder dates and then just as that was all happening my granddad died quite suddenly so after things had settled down a bit I started making a comic about that summer to kind of process everything. And it's called small hours after a pair my dad wrote at the time.

7:12And it was really stressful and reflecting on it since and through making the comic it's kind of made me see how much pressure is putting on myself to work all the time even though I wasn't really feeling great I was just like using works and excuse to distract myself from everything which sometimes is good but it didn't it wasn't healthy and it's important to be as a person as well as an illustrator it sounds stupid but it's something I still have to make effort I still have to make an effort to remember that. And so this is the first page me telling people maybe I'll make a comment I don't know if you can read it it says so what have you been up to lately mmm staring out the window Maisie between levels of candy crush that was bigger at the time when I started this comment well I was thinking I might sort my right thought comic about last summer a lot happened at once it's mainly gonna be about death and dating and drawing what do you think oh my god you have to put me in it I've got tons of stories you can use my best I better start being even more funny can you put me in it I could be a black superwoman or even a mutant I don't mind good idea it could be therapeutic for you how exciting I can't wait that would be so cool it would be like everything but from your perspective just try not to friend the family too much right cool when our dates being it these are some spreads at that time I say on certain about myself and my work and actually had to give a short talk at somewhere at that point and I felt so I'm worthy to be there because I didn't feel like a proper illustrator yet and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to listen to me talk then also in the back of my mind just a thought like your granddad's dying none of this matters so I don't think I gave very uplifting talk hopefully this one's better it's quite scary like putting something so personal out there but doing it has led to so many conversations with people who have gone through similar experiences and not just grief but like just working and graduating and freelancing and bad dates and everything like that it's felt really worth it to open up. And I've been working on it off and on for a few years and self-publishing paths and now I'm going to a crowd fund with unbound to make a book.

10:24So I've made a little video just to persuade you to look that up and pre-order a copy ♪

11:23[Applause]

11:34[Applause]

11:42so now you're thinking yes so fast-forward a bit from that. And I stopped working at home and started working in a shared space with lovely people. And this picture of my corner there that share with artist Charlotte me he's in day job as well then at the beginning of last year I was having another crisis so it starts with crisis and I needed to get away for a bit.

12:12So I decided to go to Japan because I'd been there before and had some friends there and decided to go for about six weeks and travel around a bit with Sharla and various other people too I was a bit scared of booking it at the time bit like what am I doing but in hindsight it was probably the best thing I could have done both personally and professionally because I don't usually keep sketchbooks but when I went I decided to try and record everything.

12:44And I sort of scrapped it I wanted to capture it a bit more interestingly than take loads of photos on my phone which I will say dead but it stopped me feeling guilty you for being away and kind of look at stuff in a different way there's some pages from it it was a nice chance sort of a break from Commission's because sometimes like from working for other people I don't feel particularly free and I forget to just have fun so it was good to just experiment and liberating like me work for myself with no real purpose just explore how to like record what we're seeing and feeling in these places here's some pics it's challenging to try an oil paint in all these places sometimes I've run out of white spirit which I used to thin the paint's and I'd have to ask like confused hostile people if I could borrow some just like cooking oil which turns out turns all your paintings yellow very quickly but yeah they're really greasy now but maybe yeah maybe don't do that.

14:15But the whole way of working it changed how I painted because I had to be more flexible and it kind of gave me more confidence in myself from having to work quickly and be more adaptable and be a bit less like tentative with marks and bold was mark making and colors and then when I came back I carried on working from photos and just painting some of the memories I felt compelled to record so I'm not really into super realistic paintings and sometimes I worry my style can get like quite easy slide into that so a lot of that effort of making stuff sometimes in the withholding of details and trying to stop myself before it gets to exact I tried to be guided more by the atmosphere or the feeling and then doing all that personal work led to briefs that were more directly linked to my interests and that way of painting like these big prints they did for magma it's in my sketches and some details these are a lot more detailed because they're a lot bigger as well I was still trying to like hold back. And some of the details I didn't even see when I was there or when I just glanced at the photo but then kind of blowing up those images I know it's like this weird little drummer man and other signs and colors and shapes and some illustrations for a book about forest bathing.

16:12And it also led to getting some work from Japanese clients and being represented by a Japanese agent say who some advertising work this out. There is is a series of adverts between showcasing the projects that this company makes and each one is a conversation between the company and the product so this is a conversation between the company checker and the rocket but I'm not going to attempt to translate it now just know it's very cute and then this year also led to meeting some salaries like well last year we met galleries and then that led to this year having shows there and also having show in Hong Kong so these are some dogs with met in Hong Kong and that's me me on the left and dim sum on the right and also we had a exhibition back in Japan called hot air that I put on with Charlotte and Charlene man in Tokyo and then Asaka I did some new paintings and weavings and other bits and bobs and I also got to show the paintings that had done the year before and kind of bring them back to where it had all began and it felt really good like they're gone full circle and just to talk about them with people who had their own experience of the experiences of those places or who had traveled there or growing up there and they're super rewarding and that's it so thank you [Applause]