Katriona Chapman

Katriona Chapman, Illustrator, London UK www.iris-illustration.co.uk "I have a very tiny workspace, but my work tends to be quite small so it's not a problem as long as I stay organised. I fit everything around my drawing desk which was given to me by a friend. She lives on the other side of London, and it took three of us to lug it across the city on public transport. I like having a lot of images around me, and I have a frequently-updated collection of illustrations that I like on the wall next to my desk." "I keep my printer under the desk, but if I'm doing a lot of printing I take it out. If I don't, I have to keep bending down to retrieve prints and I usually end up banging my head at some stage." "My work is mainly pencil-based and I use a jewellery-box from Muji to store most of my pencils. I tend to organise them according to how frequently I use them, so that I don't have to hunt through ones that I hardly ever use when I'm looking for a particular colour." "I hate throwing away pencils that I've almost used up. I continue to use them until they're ridiculously short, then keep the stubs as souvenirs." "I have nowhere to store large pieces of paper or paintings so I just keep them stacked against against the wall. My dream is to own a planchest one day." "I have a few shelves for art supplies and general junk that I like to have on display. I have quite a lot of toys relating to children's books and children's TV, and a lot of handicrafts that I collected while I was travelling in Mexico. The big bullet is a new addition to my collection: I occassionally work at a large London theatre, and recently while I was watching a show there, an actor ran past me and lost one of the bullets from his cartridge-belt. I felt bad about keeping it, but I liked it a lot and I figured they would never miss one bullet when each of the actors was draped in hundreds of the things!" "I've put up various bits of shelving around my tiny room, trying to take advantage of the high ceilings that I have. They may not be the best workmanship that I've ever seen, but I like the fact that I put them up myself." -K.C.