E.K. Mosley is a British writer and illustrator who grew up living between Texas and London, but currently resides by the Cornish seaside. They studied Illustration at Falmouth University and now work as a freelance illustrator and writer. Emily works in a diverse range of media from paint pens, ink, watercolour and digital, to a unique form of hand-cut stencil screen-printing inspired by old Japanese Woodblock prints.
To find out a little more about their work, we asked E.K. Mosley a few questions…
What inspires your work?
My childhood Labrador, fairytales, music, my cat, frogs, dreams, the sound of words, nostalgia, small joys and acts of kindness. The natural world, imagined worlds and worlds that can only be seen under the lens of a microscope or from afar by a telescope.
Can you tell us a bit about your writing/illustration process?
My stories often begin with a character, an emotion and a single image in my head. Once I have the image drawn I start to build a story around that illustration until perhaps the story has moved on from that initial illustration entirely. I begin most illustrations with a rough sketch of the composition and then I’ll draw in all the details. Once the pencil work is done I go over it all with a black fine line pen. Then I scan the line drawing into Photoshop, fix any mistakes and print the line drawing onto heavy paper. This allows me to add colour without the fear of the black ink running (and if I make a mistake or change my mind in the colour stage I can always print the line work off again). For colour I use acrylic paint pens, Japanese Gansai Tambi inks, or Chinese watercolours.