Artist Feature - Cee Biscoe Oct 24 2014
Meet the artists
Though it might be a bit cold and cloudy here in Surrey, we can at least enjoy and share some beautiful paintings by our featured artist, Cee Biscoe! Each scene is painted to perfection with bright colours, lovely soft brushstrokes and charming characters. A great children's book illustrator, there's lots more to be enjoyed in her online portfolio!
As a young teenager all I wanted to do was to design record covers. I left school at 16 to study Foundation Art
and Graphic Design, much to the chagrin of my headmistress, who had strongly advised against trying to make a career in art. In some ways she was right as I wasn't able to get any creative work straight from college – in fact my first job was in a record shop. Whilst I wasn't actually designing the sleeves, at least I was surrounded by them!
It was only many years later, having been made redundant from an office post, that I was able to return to my artistic ambitions. My early professional commissions were from greetings card publishers and soon I realised that my style and interests seemed to naturally lend themselves to children's books. I wasn't sure how to get into this line, so I did lots of research, worked weekends in my village library and went on some workshops and seminars, which then led to me taking a course in the subject at Chelsea School of Art where I became totally inspired. After that, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do the MA in Children's Book Illustration in Cambridge as a part-time student. It was at the Graduation Show in 2008 that my work attracted the interest of a publisher and I was offered my first picture book contract with Little Tiger Press for the lovely story 'Gruff The Grump' (written by Steve Smallman). Since then I've illustrated over a dozen other picture books and board books for both UK and overseas publishers. At the end of 2012 I was very happy to join Advocate Art, who have opened up new opportunities for me and put many enjoyable projects my way.
I always feel there's still so much to learn - in fact you never stop - and I like to keep developing my style and technique and taking on new challenges, although I am most at ease illustrating animals and people rather than anything mechanical or technical. I paint mainly in either acrylics or watercolour, and I love being a traditional artist because I like the physical connection to my illustrations – the way an image is transferred from my brain to my hand to the pencil or brush and then to paper. I'm also quite at ease with messiness, which is just as well.