Q&A Interview with illustrator and lettering artist, Sarah J Coleman aka Inkymole, Capsules Books, September 2018

Reproduced here from an interview by Michelle at Capsules Books: https://capsulesbook.com/blog/sarahjcoleman

Interviews are funny things. 

You have to be honest, but keep your professional veneer; you can’t show off, but it’s important to talk about your achievements, since you’re being asked about them. I’m often surprised at the things I say in interviews, as I find myself being more candid than I expected to be. And sometimes, when you read them back, it can be like reading about someone else! 

But whatever the outcome, it’s always my hope that there’s something useful in it for those who take the time to read it.

© Sarah J Coleman / Sarah was the first person in 25 years to illustrate the cover of American Playboy

Hello Sarah!

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us about your creative practice, recent work and future projects.

Please could you tell us about how you started your creative career?

It started very young, as soon as I could hold a pencil! But, in a nutshell, I did a degree in Illustration where I was a bit hermit-y, in the with cleaners at 7am and out with the security guards at 10pm. I won an award for my lettering and started working for clients before I graduated (I did a book cover for Carrie Fisher and a couple of other small pieces) before going on to work full time…there’s quite a lot I also did in between, but your readers may keel over asleep if I list them all!

We are very proud to be featuring your work in Ascenders Volume.1, Leaders In Contemporary Illustrationout in December. Could you tell us about some of the pieces you will be featuring in your printed portfolio?

Thank you. I’m excited to be part of a new publication, and one based in in a country that’s not the one I live in! I’ve included some recent chalk work I did for a French client, as I love to work in different languages. I’ve also chosen a nice collection of book covers, as they’re great for demonstrating the breadth and diversity of the lettering work I do. And I do do a LOT of books!

© Sarah J. Coleman

One of your most recent projects is illustrating the 200th anniversary edition of Wuthering Heights to coincide with the 200th birthday of Emily Brontë. The book is available now and your cover looks incredible, we’re excited to see all the illustrations within.

I understand that this was a story very close to your heart from a young age, and you’ve even exhibited at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. How did it feel to be asked to commemorate such a landmark edition and as a long-time reader, did you always have an idea of how you wanted to represent the characters and settings? Did the final result finish up to how you originally envisaged?

I felt a great sense of responsibility but also big excitement. I had to talk myself down from the ledge of thinking ‘this has to be the best work you’ve EVER done’ to a much more relaxed state of ‘let’s just let the ink flow, and see what happens organically’. I know the book so well, in the end all I needed to do was tune into it. The end result was better than I had hoped, but I could never have predicted that particular outcome! I like those jobs the best.

Wuthering Heights for Harpercollins UK, © Sarah J. Coleman

We understand you’ve recently celebrated some career milestones, with over 450 books illustrated (covers, interiors and both) as well as reaching over 25 years in illustration. You’ve certainly come a long way since winning ‘Best Handwriting in school’.

What would your advice be to your younger self?

Yes it’s flown. Seriously, 25 years have gone by in what feels like 5, and I know I still think like a new illustrator — anxious to promote, always feeling the competitiveness of the industry, never comfortable with resting and always thinking about what’s coming next.

My advice to my 23 year old self would be to try to make sure there’s always time for mucking about. I work so fast and furious for clients, particularly on work I get through my agent, that I sometimes forget that I’m not a machine I need time and space to develop. Often, development and experimentation happens ‘on the job’ — which is a good way of making it happen, but risky, and quite pressured. Investment in self is absolutely vital, and I feel the areas where it’s lacking of it as I get older; I know other illustrators feel the same. But I would let my 22-year-old self know that she was right to join the gym as soon as she left college!

(By the way I doubt my handwriting would win a prize now — it’s like The Picture of Dorian Grey; the more I’ve worked publicly as a lettering artist, the more my ‘real’ writing has deteriorated!)

Next year sees the release of activist Malala Yousafzai’s third book, which you’ve created the front cover for. You’ve previously worked with her on ‘Malala’s Magic Pencil’. That is amazing! How does it feel, knowing that the work you have created with a Nobel Prize laureate will be seen by millions of people around the world?

It feels nice, and although I treat it like a another job while I’m actually working on it — simply to make sure the same level of objectivity and efficiency is applied — I receive the finished books and get a warm glow across my face!

They could have chosen any lettering artist in the world, yet they chose me, so I feel very privileged. She is truly an excellent role model, and not just for women and girls.

You’ve illustrated world renowned philosopher and spiritual teacher Ram Dass’s new book — ‘Walking Each Other Home’ which is out now.Could you share a quote from him that particularly resonates with you?

As it happens my copies arrived this morning! And this quote popped out of the page at me as I was flicking through (it has a LOT of pages!):

“You are not dead yet. It’s not too late to open your depths by plunging into them, and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.”Good huh?

© Sarah J. Coleman

2019 is an exciting year for you with a top secret project released, involving a very famous film coming into book form for the first time!

How did you get involved with the project, and when will we know more information?

It came from a publisher I’ve worked with a lot in the past, but an art director I’d only done one book for previously. I think my combination of inky, layered textures, the darker stuff I naturally lean towards and the ability to create strong type centrepieces pointed flow-chart-style to me! I haven’t got a final publication date, but I think it’s early summer. I believe it’s hardback, and special finishes are currently being discussed!

© Sarah J. Coleman

You have built up a diverse and successful business, working across everything from a record label, to advertising, film production and of course, illustration.

Could you share some advice for young creatives looking to establish themselves commercially?

Gosh that is quite difficult. The landscape I graduated into was very different from the one I enjoy working in now. But I think there are commonalities.

• It won’t happen overnight, building a career takes investment and you need to be brave, taking risks, having a stab at things.
• 
  
• It will always be hard work. Especially just as you think it might start to chill a bit — that’s when you need to sink your teeth in!
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• Talk to people, a lot — in person, and pick up the phone. ‘Business’ is just another word for relationships, with money thrown in!
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• Authenticity is key. You are only you; you can never be ‘them’, and their successis notyour failure.
• 
  
• Do not take social media at face value — massive pinches of salt and a humorous dose of cynicism will keep you from thinking everything and everyone else is unattainably perfect! It can be your best friend and your worst enemy, so treat it accordingly.
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• Look after your body and your mind. Start now. How you handle both will directly shape your 30, 50, 70 year old working self. There is no business without you.

© Sarah J. Coleman

Finally, could we ask about your pseudonym, Inkymole, how did that come about?

Rather undramatically! My surname is Coleman, and because I was short sighted at school with pretty thick bins*, that got turned into Colemole, which got shortened to Mole. The inky but came as a result of a lifetime spent with ink and paint on my fingers and just started to sort of get slung in front of it. Clients were calling me Inky on the phone, and when sarahcoleman.comwas already taken when it came to buying my first domain, inkymole.comwas free — so I bought that! Et voilà. Inkymole! 

*British slang for glasses!

© Sarah J. Coleman

The Life & Death of The Ace of Shades

Where possible, once a book cover is finished, I like to unite the original art with the author whose words inspired it. I've been collecting these stories at 'Where it Went' on my main website, but I'm adding them here too.

Now, I can't always share 'Where It Went' posts right away as I have to wait some months between finishing a cover and that cover's 'Reveal'. Sometimes this can be as long as a year.

But...my cover for Amanda Foody's new novel 'Ace of Shades' is an exception, as after several months' work on it, the completed cover was signed off then, at the last minute, swapped for a photomontage and font.

Now, this happens. It once happened after 9 months' work producing 47 - yes, 47 - different cover designs for a particular book of adult female fiction. 'Chick Lit' as it was (and probably still is) called - one of the hardest genres to get a cover approved for, due to its mass-market nature. The art director was happy, the author was happy, I was happy, sales were happy...the supermarkets weren't. You can't really get upset when this happens, because ultimately, your job as cover designer/illustrator is to help make a book sell, and if the Sales team at the publishers, or the buyers at the supermarkets - sellers of huge quantities of books - don't like a cover, no matter how beautiful or hard-grafted or loved by everyone else it is, it's not going to get through.

So, here was my completed cover for 'Ace of Shades', and below it, the one that the book went out with.

Along the way to the original version, there were many pencil sketches, revisions and two full size 'final' pencil renderings, before ink even touched paper. 

I always start a book cover with thumbnails, like these, to get my ideas down quickly and record them all, to weed out the weak ones from the possibles. And I do include the ones I suspect might be rubbish - because you never know where an idea will lead. I do this in my floppy Moleskine Journal - thin paper, lots of pages, I can carry it about, make a mess and abuse it a bit along the way, glue things into it and rip pages out - it's what a sketchbook's for! Here are a couple of thumbnail pages:

These'll often go to the client 'as-is'. Early on in my career I started to get a reputation for working up ideas too well - ie: making them rather too finished - and sending too many of those at once. Although it often impressed and delighted a client, this approach actually made their job harder, as it was more difficult for them to feed in to an idea, and to isolate one that wasn't working from one that was, because near-finished artwork can be very seductive, and can disguise the weaknesses in an idea or a layout. Plus, they'd have trouble choosing from the sometimes as many as 20 ideas I'd send in.

I still do that from time to time, but nowadays try to keep the number down to about 6 or 7 ideas, and resist the temptation to take the artwork too far before getting an opinion on it. Tough to do when you're really into a job and enjoying the process! (Having 47 options scrapped for a stock photo + font was definitely a turning point! That art director and I still work together, btw...and our record remains unbroken.)

So the ideas the client liked are then developed into large, A3  sketches - on paper, for this one, since this is the look and process I'd planned from the start. Not ALL my covers are paper-and-ink based - I've done all-digital ones - but most are:

From here, a final direction's agreed on, and a final pencil rendering is made. Tweaks might happen along the way - but with a good, fine pencil-stick Papermate Tuff Stuff eraser, this is no issue at all!

From here, the ink is added - my favourite black drawing ink on my favourite Japanese nib, helped by a handful of different sizes of gel pen - Mujis, and Mitsubishi Unipin Fine Liners:

...till myself and the art director agree it's finished and ready to have its colour added!

which is a process of very careful scanning with a very high-end professional scanner (worth the eye-watering investment) and adding layers of colour and texture created with ink on paper, sometimes combined with digital colour. This usually takes a few versions to get right - my initial 'vision' might not work when it's actually in front of me, or doesn't work when put through the 'Amazon Test' - which is where you reduce the cover to the size of an Amazon store icon, and check it for legibility, impact and muddiness!

Here are a couple of those colour tests (there were quite a few!):

and the final result you've seen posted at the top!

I wrote to Amanda to tell her about how much I'd enjoyed working on the cover, and that I had the original art - would she like it? She'd liked the first version of her cover, and wasn't sure of the reasons for going in a different direction but, like me, knows that these decisions are sometimes out of our hands. I posted her the original art, but kept these images as a record of the life and death of this particular favourite, so that it can live forever in blogland, as the one that was not to be.