G I R L

We met Nina Cosford at her Hastings studio then headed out location drawing at the iconic Net Huts, the black timber storage sheds at Rock-a-Nore.

How did you find your way into illustration over other artistic disciplines?
Nina.  I grew up in a creative family. My dad has been a prevalent storyboard and airbrush artist since the 1980s. He worked on music videos and TV commercials. That gave me a glimpse into the industry and showed me respect for it. Because my dad was often very busy working, he had a workroom in the house. I imagine it’s quite a rare insight for a young person to see the professional side of an artistic practice, though maybe not so much today. From the get-go, I didn’t have too much doubt that you could earn money in the arts.

I was encouraged and supported with my art but never pushed. I loved studying and copying other artists through school, college, and even at university. I would obsess over how artists captured certain things or got a particular atmosphere. I would quite laboriously copy and replicate to try to see what it would feel like to draw that line or paint with that colour. I was a bit of a teacher’s pet. I always did more than I needed to because it was second nature for me to be drawing.

I enjoyed art at school, so I naturally fell into art school after sixth form. I did an Art Foundation. The course was only one year, it was free and I was up for experimenting with it. There was a slight hesitation because I had also studied English and Music Technology at A-level.

I’ve played piano since a young age and have been in bands, so option B was to progress with my music, songwriting, music production, etc. I sometimes think, what if? I’ve seen friends from my music course go on to have really cool careers in the music industry.

At university, we had a piano in our studio, so I was able to teach a friend to play and duet with other classmates. I also made music for a couple of people’s animation pieces for the end-of-year show, so there was still a small element of music in my life.

The nature of the Art Foundation is that you sample lots of different practices. At the time, illustration wasn’t an option for me, so I ended up specialising in graphics; that was the closest I could get to it. It was useful because I studied typography and layout, and that’s when I got a genuine interest in composition and certain design practices, which still feed into my work today.

So, I went to Kingston University to study for a BA in Illustration & Animation. I didn’t enjoy the first year for a few reasons. I didn’t move to Kingston and was still living in Surrey and getting the train there and back, over three hours of daily travel. I wasn’t living the university freshers’ life and felt more like
a commuter. Plus, I didn’t have much stuff going on at home because all my friends were off at university or travelling. So, I didn’t get a chance to attend many events, socialise, or get involved all that much.

On top of that, I didn’t like all the experimenting. I had just done an Art Foundation and wanted to find my style. Looking back, it’s super unrealistic to think you’re going to find a style in your first year at Uni, although some people might.

I reached a crossroads, and I was preparing to quit the course. I didn’t know if illustration would be my thing; I was thinking of music again and started thinking more of English. I’d done well with it at school and college, and I had the grades to get into Oxford. I was looking at applying and setting up an interview, but then, as my first year at Kingston came to an end, things suddenly clicked that summer. I was drawing a plant in the back garden and really enjoying it. I thought, this is what I like doing. I can say a lot through this.

I went all in and decided to stick with the BA. I committed to the course, and I moved to Kingston. I loved it from the start of my second year; there was just a complete shift. I had a couple of encouraging tutors who boosted my confidence with my mark-making. It was the first time someone had specified what it was about my way of working that made it unique. I started to see that I could develop a style and maybe find a niche.

We had an experimental life drawing course. We would do anything between thirty-minute and 10-second poses. You can imagine how playful and hectic it was; it was chaotic! But I tapped into something: an energy in my work and a forced sense of confidence.

“If you’ve only got 10 seconds to draw something, you can only go with your instincts, and you’ve got to commit. That borderline stress fuels me and is a challenge I want to respond to.”

That was such a pivotal point in my mark-making, in my developing ability to capture the essence of something on paper. I took that confidence into
other areas of the course, such as location drawing. Another tutor would often take us on field trips to London at least once a week. We’d draw in the V&A or in the middle of Central London, where we’d block the pavements and probably annoy passers-by.

Have you been able to keep music in your life?
Nina.  I still play in my own time for personal pleasure. Several years ago, I started making video game music for my partner Ali, an illustrator, animator and video game designer. It’s the ’80’s/’90’s style platform game music, that 8-bit kind of sound. I could just about remember from my music-tech days how to use the software and build up tracks and edit them. To date, I’ve created three video game soundtracks, all with Ali who was commissioned by various artists in the rap and hip-hop industry. It’s a random side-line, but it helps to satisfy my musical side.

How did you transition from a student to producing work for clients?
Nina.  At my degree show, as the course was ending, an art director from Walker Books came to our show. They contacted me and I was commissioned to illustrate two books that summer after graduating. My work had been up on a six-by-four wall space and I showed a massive montage of buildings I’d drawn over the last few years. It was my strongest work and the kind of commissions I wanted to make.

That work caught the art director’s eye because the project was a series of pop-up city guides for children. That was how my career began: to illustrate two city guides, one for Dublin and the other for Edinburgh.

I also moved to Hastings that summer because my mum had just moved there during my last year at university. So, I didn’t have my hometown to return to; all my foundations had changed entirely. It was a new town for me, and I barely had any friends around. Looking back, that project was a great anchor that kept me occupied and busy.

Working from a tiny bedroom felt unprofessional until I saw the books printed and stocked in places like the Tate Modern shop. To an outsider, it looked like an actual book (which it was!). So, from that moment on, I thought I was an illustrator; I was getting paid, and my work was out there.

The project snowballed, and I ended up doing eight books as part of that same series. That kept me busy for a couple of years. I tried many different types of illustration projects during that time because my work had started circulating in print. Showing finished/commissioned work on my website felt
more legitimate.

At this time, I wasn’t confident enough to feature that many people in my work. In a way, I channelled personalities into the buildings I was drawing. I still see buildings like people as I try to capture their character, the wonkiness and the idiosyncrasies of that structure and so on. You can see a character in almost anything.

When did people start appearing in your work?
Nina.  I had a real lull in my commissioned work.
I decided to start a fan project for a new TV show made by HBO (Home Box Office) and Lena Dunham. It was called GIRLS, a tongue-in-cheek observational drama about millennials and that strange in-between phase in people’s lives. The characters were too old to be children, not yet old enough to be adults, and desperately trying to find their own identities. It has some amazing writing and observations of these four main characters that we follow through the years.

Although it was set in New York, something resonated with me. I didn’t quite identify with the characters themselves, but I identified with some of their issues and thoughts. I’d take vignettes from the show or some of the characters’ quotes and visualise them.

This was when I started drawing people more. It was a good brief for practising this subject matter. I drew the characters and then a very minimal background, which I hadn’t done before, a linear background and then full-colour characters so that the people were more dominant and still sat within a scene. I’d write the quote graphically in a coloured bar underneath, like a strip. I created this formula, which I then applied throughout the whole series. The project kept me busy and gave me the purpose of coming into the studio and working, even though I didn’t have any client work at the time.

I started uploading the drawings to my Tumblr page back when Tumblr was a thing and a great platform to share your work. Within a few days of launching it, Lena Dunham (the writer) and some people at HBO had seen it and shared it. Someone from HBO messaged me saying, “Hi, we love what you’re doing!” and sent me a goodie bag full of merch relating to the show.

Very soon after that, they commissioned me to make promotional content for the upcoming season. It turned from a fun Fan Art Project to a commissioned collaboration with HBO. I also designed a merchandise range for the show. I went to the season three premiere in London and was hired by Sky Atlantic to draw guests’ portraits in the VIP lounge. It was an extraordinary experience and sparked an ongoing collaboration and association with the show. Even after that season ended, more seasons followed, and I still responded to each one.

I picked up a good social media following by posting regularly after each episode had aired. Plus, the association with HBO and Lena Dunham sharing my work with their vast followings helped. That support was invaluable.

I suddenly had a captive audience of people interested in that kind of female narrative and I used the show as my subject matter and material. Eventually, the GIRLS TV show ended and I was left with this audience. I knew what resonated with them because it was close to what resonated with me.

I saw an opportunity to build on the female narrative and that zeitgeist because I had some familiarity with it myself. My confidence had grown and I thought maybe I can now develop my voice in this area. That helped me transition into more self-initiated pieces where I would take incidental moments, similar to those from the show, but also more of my own and perhaps add a touch more sarcasm or an English humour twist.

I don’t quite draw myself; I draw a character with some of my traits. She is not straight-up me but a recurring character that looks a little like me. I’ve never named her. The closest is the generic name of ‘Girl’. She is simplified enough to have a universal appeal so that other people can see themselves in her.

“So, I started to tap into my semi-autobiographical content, which appealed to people who could see themselves in it.”

Did that work lead to more projects, and how do you maintain your visibility as a freelancer?
Nina.  After GIRLS, I was approached by a publisher who had seen my work with HBO on the show. They asked if I could make a book about my scenarios and universal situations. We called it My Name is Girl, a handbook without being a handbook about how to be a girl in the modern age. It’s a cross between a diary and a guidebook compiled from observational vignettes of day-to-day scenarios that most people could relate to.

This project was quite pivotal. It was an opportunity to showcase a cross-section of what I could do by featuring more graphic and comic elements amongst the illustrations. I think what’s become recognisable about my work is a simplified range of colours with a unity of the type and image and how they work together.

When sharing content through social media, you’ve got to get that message across straightaway in four seconds, maybe less. That’s not the main thing I’m thinking about, just subliminally. However, social media is constantly changing and becoming more challenging to navigate and sustain. The exposure differs from what it was even three or four years ago. It doesn’t hold the same currency that it once did.

I started a newsletter a few years ago, which has built up over time. It’s a great way to have a bit more of a conversation and to practice more long-form writing, which I don’t often get the chance to do on social media.

At the start of 2024, I started a Patreon account. I decided to test out another platform for sharing my work through subscriptions, where people pay a small monthly fee to have access to more of my work, insight, tips, making of, etc. It’s about sustaining my work through quiet periods like 2023.

Do you still do location drawing, and is that where sketchbooks feature as a practice?
Nina.  Some of my projects overlap. In 2014 (a year or so before I made My Name is Girl), the publisher Frances Lincoln commissioned me to make a series of four illustrated biographies of influential women in art and literature: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Coco Chanel, and Frida Kahlo. They were looking for the modern twist I’d included in my GIRLS work for these historical figures and iconic women.

My favourite is the Frida Kahlo book. I actually went to Mexico and visited her house. I love a field trip, and it was the perfect opportunity to do location drawing again, drawing in situ in a sketchbook.

I’ve maintained the location drawing side of things through travelling lots and even if I’m not travelling. I always make sure I’ve got the means of drawing. I always have a sketchbook or a journal and at least one pen in my bag at any given time because I don’t like the excuse of being unable to draw. Ideas can be so fleeting.

When the pandemic began in 2020, I started doing weekly sketchbook tours on social media. I keep all my sketchbooks lined up and numbered on shelves in my studio, my first one starting in 2011 when I graduated. It seemed like quite a good time to reflect whilst being stuck indoors, so I started looking back on my work through the sketchbooks to see my evolution as a creative and professional.

I decided to share the background of my process via videos because people often want to see that the most. Whether it’s a finished drawing or hearing about my career or style, people always want to know about the journey.

Then, I have my travel journals, which are always in the same format. When I find something that works, I stick with it.

I made those sketchbook tour videos for a year up until the end of 2020. I got a massive surge of interest in the whole sketchbooking process and how to start one. People asked if I would recommend a particular sketchbook or what my favourite sketchbook was, and I didn’t have a solid answer. I’d always used a plain Moleskine notebook, but it has pros and cons. I’ve tested many other sketchbooks before and can cherry-pick the things I like about them, but none of them ticked all the boxes, and that is when I saw an opportunity to design my own sketchbook.

Through interest in my videos, I gained my followers’ trust. So I took that and designed what I’d been looking for all along. I bit the bullet and got 1,000 sketchbooks manufactured. It took off really well and got a lot of interest. It gave me something else to concentrate on through the pandemic.

I started a whole other social media account, which has opened up this lovely sense of community amongst sketchbook users who are as passionate about sketching as I am.

“I’m lucky; my channel has a really encouraging, supportive, lovely community. I will always value that. Negative comments that so often occur on social media aren’t usually a thing I have to contend with.”

Nina Cosford - Illustrator
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