See behind-the-scenes as I prepared to take part in a giant Corgi trail
Exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time, this project was a dream to work on. One of 19 artists commissioned by London HQ (four South Westminster Business Improvement Districts), I wanted to be involved from the moment I was approached. They wanted a playful way to mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee by celebrating her love of Corgis with a giant Corgi trail (some Corgis up to 2 metres in length!) running through central London.
Each Corgi was designed by a different London artist. Mine was Jane, no.14 on the trail, and until the end of August 2022, you’ll be able to find her on the United Nations green outside the QEII Centre (find out more about the trail including a map of all corgi locations here).
This photo and cover photo by Mickey Lee for London HQ
I fell in love with the project as soon as I got visual mock-ups, sketching out ideas and scribbling over the visuals. I knew there would be stripes involved, and I wanted a travel theme, so I researched places The Queen had travelled to during her reign, both State and Commonwealth visits.
A striped jacket to represent the Platinum Jubilee
I decided to create a jacket for Jane, made of seven broad stripes to represent each decade of The Queen’s reign. I wanted bright, playful colours to answer the brief and researched The Queen’s outfits from each decade to build a colour palette. To create harmony, I created a set of common colours to use within each broad stripe and created a collar and tail of stripes.
Experimenting with mixing colours to get the right one for each decade
I sketched shapes that appealed to me from the places I’d researched and built these together to create a flat jacket. I also mixed up my base colours ahead of time - experimenting first to make sure the colours were just right.
Once Jane arrived, the next challenge was to transfer my design across - so I made a jacket out of plain fabric to get an idea of how the shapes and lines would fall.
Mapping my design onto Jane
Watch Jane come to life with a timelapse of my process
I loved every aspect of this project, whether it was research, finding colours, coming up with ideas and thinking through the possibilities. Heart and soul went into every single moment, from the research to the final painting. If you’ve seen the trail and found Jane, do let me know what you thought!