FEATURED ILLUSTRATOR Jasmine Stephenson

Jasmine Stephenson is an East Yorkshire based illustrator currently studying at university. She learned from her grandad at a young age and continues to create magical and whimsical artwork.

I am an illustrator living in East Yorkshire, England – always inspired by the beautiful landscapes and seascapes which I am lucky to be surrounded by. I first fell in love with picture books when I was a child, my favourite was called Peace At Last by Jill Murphy. I always found the darkness and quiet that came around at night unnerving and scary. I loved how this story interpreted this time of day — much brighter than my imagination did.

I am going into my third year to study Illustration at University, and have loved the freedom I have had to experiment with new mediums and projects.

Pastel village with girl and star

I was introduced to art at a very young age by my grandad, who loved to watercolour. He spent many hours teaching me all he knew about drawing. I have always doodled and painted in every stage of my life and distinctly remember making my GCSE science book into a colourful masterpiece (sadly the teacher didn't think it was!). I knew I loved creating art, but I was faced with the dilemma that I just didn't know how I could make a career out of it. It wasn't until I had my first child and was reintroduced to picture books, that I finally found a focus for my practice.

Since then, I have been creating art that is magical, colourful and whimsical using any medium I can get my hands on – though I do lean towards acrylic and pastel. After I have scanned in my painting, I print it again on a large scale where I can work in the final details using pencil crayons. I then work over the traditional work in procreate, though I am finding in recent months that I am doing less of this – for me, I much prefer to work on paper than a screen. I think the reason for this is that there are so many unexpected smudges that happen using traditional mediums that often give the work more of an organic texture – sometimes these ‘accidents’ are my favourite part of an artwork.

I always begin a new piece with roughs and a few notes of what things I am trying to capture, for example emotions and themes. Recently, I have been writing a book about an owl called Olwin, where Olwin’s mum shows him her favourite place, which is above the clouds underneath a starry sky – after this, Olwin wants so desperately to find a place in the forest that he can call his ‘favourite’. This has been the route of my inspiration for new artwork. [See Olwin and his mum in the gallery.]

In my first year at university, I entered a competition to illustrate a book called Henry’s Vegetable Plop, a chapter book by a local author. I was delighted to have won and was grateful to gain so many important lessons so early in my illustration journey. I had altered my usual illustration style to cater to the author's requests and quickly realised that this made the process quite a lot more difficult. Despite this, working alongside an author was such a positive experience which I am incredibly grateful for. I have recently been taking on work with authors who are self publishing, and am just a month away from completing the artwork for my first picture book job!

Fairies having a picnic

Despite loving the process of how I’m currently working, my aim right now is to get an agent. This is because there is a huge amount of this industry that I am still unsure how to navigate, and would love to take on many more illustration jobs. Eventually, I would love to be a full time author-illustrator. I have been sending my portfolio out, and hope to find the perfect agent for me, very soon.