Eleanor Hardiman is an illustrator and designer from Bristol, UK. With a distinct, modern and clean illustrative style Eleanor has worked on a vast variety of national and international projects including magazine covers, book covers, advertising, packaging and illustrated windows.
To find out a little more about her work, we asked Eleanor the following questions:
What inspires your work?
I like to take inspiration from the every day, taking time to spot patterns in the mundane or ordinary. I also take a lot of inspiration from traditional patterns by artists like William Morris or the end pages of old books and I love looking at drawings from the 1800’s recording animals or botanical illustrations from voyages of discovery, they have a beautiful simplicity and elegance.
Tell us a bit about your process….
I start by making lots of thumbnail sketches, these are usually very rough and help me to empty my head on to the paper. I then work these up into more detailed drawings. Final artwork is the most enjoyable part for me, I paint in watercolour and try to include the natural textures and stokes, keeping editing to a minimum. I paint all my imagery from light to dark so I always have a really clear idea of where the image is going before starting a piece.
