My first big commission – Jasmine Thompson
By Rising Artist Jasmine Thompson
Working as a freelancer can be really overwhelming. Like, really overwhelming. From dealing with clients, to deadlines, making sure you get enough work, and of course there’s taxes. But despite all of this, it can be incredibly rewarding. You get to work on briefs that excite you and you’re constantly working with new people. Taking on different work forces you to expand your skills set and become really adaptable.
I’m an illustrator, and this year I completed my biggest commission to date. It challenged me, pushed me to my absolute limit, and tested me like no other project before! I was approached by the Royal Shakespeare Company to produce a mural at their Stratford Upon Avon theatre that responded to their latest production of Romeo & Juliet. The brief was relatively open, the main criteria being that it needed to engage with a much younger and more diverse audience in Stratford, with a focus specifically on teenagers; the group in society that probably interacted with the space the least. Prior to this I’d done a mural at Pervasive Media Studio that had got back to the RSC, so I knew to stick to a similar style. But engagement is hard; unless you know the needs and interests of the people you’re trying to reach, it’s pretty difficult to know how to get them to interact with what it is you’re doing.
Eventually, I decided on a theme and title of ‘Love As A Revolution’. I wanted to depict 7 different stories of love through the years, beginning with Romeo & Juliet—one of the most renowned and traditional ideas of what love is—and covering people and movements throughout history that changed the way we’re allowed to love. It explored LGBT rights, women’s suffrage, #MeToo, and the first interracial marriage. I wanted to look at love not just as a relationship, but as a form of unity and togetherness too.
Never underestimate how important research is when you’re working on any big commission. Background research and the development stage of a project can sometimes be the longest, but it’s important you put in the hours because it will help you ensure the client is pleased with your work, and that it hits the criteria. During this phase I did some outreach with local schools, and asked them some questions about what love looks like to them, and if they could change anything about the world what would it be? I wanted to get them thinking, but I also wanted their voices to be seen and heard on the mural walls, as the youth often get silenced and their opinions disregarded. I planned some workshops, one writing and two drawing, that would involve young people from the area, and give them an opportunity to create some work around the themes in the mural. If they knew there were opportunities to be involved and contribute, I hoped this would encourage them to engage.
Once the research and initial development was over, I began working on the initial sketches, which, once finished, would be projected onto the walls. In order to create these, I needed to make sure I worked to scale so the illustrations could be blown up perfectly onto the walls. This involved measuring the height, width, doorways, windows, skirting boards and light switches of the room. The height of that paper I created these on needed to be relative to the height of the gallery wall, so calculating how many pieces of paper I needed to create a to-scale plan of the mural was my first big barrier. It involved a lot of maths and a lot of error- but mostly a lot of patience!
You will make mistakes working on any commission, but be patient with yourself and trust the process; you will get to where you need to be, it can just be frustrating sometimes.
During this time I was also thinking about how I wanted the space to be decorated, what the flyers would look like and what my vinyl bio on the wall would say. Emailing back and forth with a commissioner can be time-consuming but it’s important you’re attentive and quick to respond—sometimes people need information, answers, images (or whatever it may be) from you on a quick turn around. Any laziness here can result in missed deadlines and you making life difficult for the person at the other end who was relying on you for something. Just get back to people as quickly as you can, and that will help ensure smooth and clear communication during the project.
The install itself was the next stage, and for this I hired help. Sometimes it’s a good option to hire some assistance if you’re working on a really big job. You want to make sure you don’t miss a deadline, so in this situation it was necessary I hired help or else it would have taken me easily three times the amount of time to complete the install. As this was a mural and even though I hired other illustrators, we all work in different styles so expecting them to copy an illustration by eye would be impossible. We worked from a projection, which made it easier for them as they could just trace my drawing, but it also made it easier for me as it ensured I got the scale spot on. Working on a large scale can mean you easily misjudge the size of your work, so having a projection there meant I stuck to plan and the artwork fitted perfectly onto the walls.
After you finish a project (and you’ve had a little break, of course!) it’s always good to follow up with the commissioner and get some feedback about how the work was received. For this commission, I wanted to find out how many people interacted with the mural whilst it was up, and any responses they gave. I deliberately drew a ‘response wall’ for people to stick post-its on which could easily be collected at the end: this provided really valuable feedback for the RSC and I after the project finished. It’s also really important to get your work documented somehow, whether that be photographed, filmed, or written up, it’s definitely something worth thinking about. This kind of thing really helps you learn from the project, and will be massively helpful in any future work you do.
I really loved working on such a huge and challenging brief. I love getting my teeth stuck into my work and this gave me exactly that. It will sometimes be stressful, but also incredibly rewarding and educational. You learn a lot from doing big projects, and challenging yourself can be daunting but ultimately you come out the other end having learnt a whole lot and expanded your skillset in the process.
It’s a tough world for young creatives but we get to create the most amazing things, so lastly whatever it is you do, remember to have fun.