A behind-the-scenes look at how Sophy Hollington creates her complex linocuts

The penultimate speaker at October’s Nicer Tuesdays Online event was Brighton-based illustrator and artist Sophy Hollington. In an engaging talk delving into her signature visual style, created by the meticulous process of linocutting, Sophy took us through a whopping recent project for one of the world’s biggest publications. Tasked with creating the artwork to run throughout the July issue of The New York Times Magazine, which was themed around fiction and The Black Death, Sophy combined detailed research, meticulous planning and a great deal of patience to create her response.

Sophy took the audience through the dos and don’ts of linocutting (some of which, she admitted, she herself breaks to make life that bit easier), but the outstanding quality of the work is the proof in the pudding. Touching on her personal works too, Sophy likes to interrogate themes of folklore, mysticism and the arcane; all themes which inform her distinguished signature aesthetic, but with a vibrant injection of psychedelic colour. To find out more about Sophy’s fascinating process, watch the talk above.