Monique Piscaer Bailey

We have been asked by a number of students if Monique Bailey, the runner up in this years London Art College competition, could explain a little about how she created her painting ‘Girl and Swan’ pictured below. Monqiue has very kindly written about her work and provided us with links to her Facebook page and website where she has time lapse video of her digital artwork. We are thrilled to be able to post this, we would like to officially thank Monique for providing this for us and we hope that you all enjoy reading it!

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My grandfather was a tapestrier for Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands and my father was an old school sign writer and oil painter. I have been painting and drawing since I was a little girl, its in my genes. Art has always been an integral part of my life and who I am.

After school I qualified as a graphic designer, I freelanced and worked as a mural artist.

In 2000 I founded the ‘Art Zoo’ studio where I teach art and textile painting classes to adults.

In 2014 I completed the Illustrating Children’s Book Diploma with Maggy and landed a lovely project to illustrate a series of online short stories. I was itching to combine my graphic background with the illustration and to speed things up, I was thinking about how I could scan in parts of my original drawings and use them again to save time. (Surely there must be an easier way than redrawing the same background over and over manually…)

So, I signed up to the Digital Illustration course with the brilliant Spencer Hill. I bought myself a graphic tablet as a Christmas present  and I started immediately with my first assignment. BoooM! That was it! I instantly fell in love… It took a while to master the digital pen, brushes and tablet, but it happened really fast. Within a week I had it down and I practiced everyday.

I get an idea in my head and I try to get the images down quite quickly, starting with the background and adding onto new layers. I find working faster allows me to be free and loose. I just block ideas, shapes and colour and gradually add detail as the work progresses. Digital painting has been such a gift to me, it feels like my missing link. It has magically combined my love of graphics and illustration.

I have three time-lapse videos I’ve created of my painting process on my ‘Art Zoo’ facebook page. Please check them out here under the videos tab: www.facebook.com/OficialArtZoo

My digital work is also for sale as limited edition canvas prints on www.artzoo.co.za

Thank you for taking the time to hear about me and what I love.

Monique Piscaer Bailey
Digital Illustration