First Acts: Creatives share their (very) early work

We invite four illustrators and designers to reveal their prehistory, sharing artworks they created as children and teenagers, and talking us through their early relationships to creativity.

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Every now and then, an artist or designer will post a picture of a primary-school art project or a painting they did as a teenager, and I always fancy there’s a little clue hidden in the image alluding to what they would go on to be. So, to investigate this further, we at It’s Nice That decided to speak to four creatives about the earliest work they have evidence of and ask them to talk through their first acts of creativity.

A whole load of fascinating themes emerge from these conversations. For many of our interviewees, creativity was a haven – a safe place, where as children they could relax, express themselves and escape from the outside world and all its complexities. Looking back on their earliest artworks, many of them also remark on the unbridled creativity that’s on display. “Every child is an artist,” Picasso famously said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” There’s definitely a hint of lamentation in some of our conversations, as our interviewees are reminded of the uninhibited way they used to create; the focus, verging on obsession, that they used to have.

And behind it all, of course, is the undeniable truth that creativity has to be nurtured in children. For all of our interviewees, there was support and encouragement, in some form or other. This didn’t always come from the formal education system or careers counsellors, who more often than not seem to have fought against creative expression. But for each of them, their need to make and create was validated and fostered. It’s a stark reminder that creativity doesn’t just spark into being from nothing. Yes, every child might be an artist, but every child needs to be given the chance as well.

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Kyle Platts: Battle scene drawn by Kyle as a teenager

Kyle Platts

“I had a difficult time in school, as most people with dyslexia do,” says Kyle Platts, who now works as an illustrator and animation director in London. “But during school, I found that I was good at one thing: drawing.” This is certainly borne out by the photos Kyle has shared of his childhood doodlings – here we see the young Kyle turning an essay question into an opportunity to depict, in gory, blood-and-guts detail, the beheading of King Charles I (“it’s taking way too much creative licence,” adult Kyle says on reflection).

Despite his passion and his knack for drawing, Kyle wasn’t encouraged at school to prepare for a career in the arts. “Careers advisors told me that cartoonists don’t make any money, that there’s no point and I should go and work in a steel mill instead,” says Kyle, who grew up in Sheffield. Thankfully, he ignored that advice and ended up doing a BTEC in Fashion before heading to London to study Illustration at Camberwell.

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Kyle Platts: Teenage doodle

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Kyle Platts: An assignment about King Charles I gets a vivid illustration treatment

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Kyle Platts: An assignment about King Charles I gets a vivid illustration treatment

The earliest works Kyle has access to on his harddrive are, he estimates, from around the age of 11 or his early teenage years. “It was always influenced by bands, movies and video games,” he says. “You can see I’m drawing my favourite skate company logos in my maths book or drawing scenes from The Matrix in history books, trying to crowbar these violent scenes into projects about Oliver Cromwell.” There is, it must be said, a fair amount of violence on display. Kyle laughs, remembering how teachers would glance anxiously over his shoulder and ask him if everything was… OK? Maybe they hadn’t seen The Matrix.

Looking at these early drawings, Kyle feels a definite sense of loss. “I’m just remembering how much I enjoyed getting completely lost in it, and almost lamenting that feeling of being able to get fully in there,” he says. “It was really just drawing one thing after the other, because it was fun to draw. I can totally imagine myself drawing the Gatling gun and making sound effects at the same time.” That level of focus is hard to recreate these days. “I have to put my phone downstairs in another room, turn the computer off, and I’m still twitching, whereas I used to be able to get into that flow, content in my own little world.”

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Kyle Platts: A recent comic (Copyright © Kyle Platts, 2023)

“During school, I found that I was good at one thing: drawing.”

Kyle Platts

The only time he gets close to that level of focus now is when he’s animating. “You don’t really have a choice,” he explains. “There’s no way you can do certain animation work, even while listening to music, because it’s so complicated. That’s the closest I get, just out of necessity, because I really have to use 100 per cent of my brain.”

Kyle has also found other strategies for getting into a flow state. This spring, Jumbo Press will be publishing an 80-page book of selected drawings and comics from his sketchbooks. The drawing style is fast and loose compared to his more well-known commercial work, which is very precise. “When going from one brief to the next without breaks it’s easy to lose that focus of what you enjoy about drawing,” he says. “These sketchbooks are a place for me to draw freely with no narrative, the joy of drawing returns pretty quickly.” So, at least it is possible to get back some of that childhood freedom.

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Anu Ambasna: Drawing of a busker done around the age of 7/8

Anu Ambasna

As we’ve seen and as we all probably remember, children have an unrivalled ability to shut out the world around them and create vivid and vibrant inner worlds. This is certainly true of Anu Ambasna, the illustrator and DJ, when she was growing up. “I realised as an adult that my art has always been my safest place,” she says. “Growing up, the home environment wasn’t so safe, so art was always something I turned to.”

Anu has shared a whole host of artworks with us, dating back to when she was around five years old and running through to her late teenage years. Creativity was a huge part of life growing up. “I spent a lot of time at home, a lot of time on my own as well,” she reflects. “And so, I think that allowed me to let my imagination run wild. I was always daydreaming as a kid. I was always in my head, coming up with different worlds.” The reason she loved drawing so much was because she could “let my imagination run wild and visualise all of the things going on in my mind,” she says. And definitely there’s a “running theme of a sense of escapism,” she adds.

“I realised as an adult that my art has always been my safest place. Growing up, the home environment wasn’t so safe, so art was always something I turned to.”

Anu Ambasna

Fashion was a huge influence on her mind, particularly as a teenager, Anu tells us. You can see this in her absent-minded sketches and collages. “I always thought I was going to be a fashion illustrator,” she says. “That was what I was working towards, what I wanted.” Her brother used to work in the Tate Modern’s bookshop and would often bring home unsold magazines for his younger sister, who would then copy and rework the fashion designs of high-fashion advertisements and photo shoots. Looking at these images today, Anu notes the precision she was trying to employ. “Because I was wanting to get into fashion illustration, I was really trying to practise drawing things in proportion, which is something I’ve always struggled with,” she says. “As soon as I realised I didn’t want to be a fashion illustrator, I decided that proportions are going to be just how they look to me.”

Towards her later teen years, we begin to see something that resembles the origins of Anu’s current, more developed illustration style. Particularly, it’s clear to see a fascination with faces emerging. “You can see that I’m trying to start developing my style,” she says. “I would just draw faces obsessively, just pages and pages of faces.” Today, one of the easiest ways to recognise Anu’s work is to look at her distinctive approach to faces (she says she still always starts with the nose and works outwards from there).

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WHAT? A self-published zine Anu made when she was 15

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Recent illustration and comic work (Copyright © Anu Ambasna, 2023)

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Anu Ambasna: Recent illustration and comic work (Copyright © Anu Ambasna, 2023)

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Anu Ambasna: Recent illustration and comic work (Copyright © Anu Ambasna, 2023)

Something else that has remained from those days is the sense of safety and security Anu finds in drawing. “Now as an adult, I’ve realised that if I’m ever feeling anxious or depressed, or if I’m just going through a bad bout of mental health, getting stuck into drawing or painting or just doing something with my hands artistically is the way that I come back to myself, back to my body, and ground myself,” she says. It was during the pandemic that she returned to drawing after a couple of years when she had stopped making art. “During that period when I wasn’t creating, I felt really lost within myself,” she says. “I’ve realised that my art is an essential part of my identity. It’s the easiest way for me to express myself.”

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Ruby Etc.: Pages from one of her “cross books” in nursery

Ruby Etc.

For many children, art is an outlet, and this is very much the case for Ruby Elliot, the self-taught illustrator, cartoonist and author now better known by her pseudonym Ruby Etc. When she was growing up, her older brother was very unwell, she tells us. “He had cancer and I was quite an angry little kid, as a consequence of the illness and the sadness in the family.” According to Ruby’s mum, when Ruby was at nursery and upset, the staff would sit her at a table and let her draw a so-called “cross book” (pictures of which you can see here). “Clearly,” says the illustrator, looking back, “it was an important emotional expression.”

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Ruby Etc.: Recent illustration work (Copyright © Ruby Etc., 2023)

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Ruby Etc.: Cover of one of Ruby’s “cross books” in nursery

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Ruby Etc.: Cover of one of Ruby’s “cross books” in nursery

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that Ruby found herself returning to drawing, when she was going through another really tough time as a young adult. She had to drop out of school during her A-Levels, because she was really unwell. “I wasn’t leaving the house, I wasn’t able to work. Drawing was pretty much one of the only things I could do,” she says. “So it was kind of out of necessity, it was a communication tool for me.” So, she picked up a pen and began writing and drawing quick comics that took a wry, dry and humorous look at her mental health and what she was going through. When she posted the comics online, they immediately and organically garnered fans and followers.

The process felt like finding a path back to a feeling she hadn’t fully experienced since childhood: “When I reconnected with drawing again as a young adult, I had that feeling of, ‘Oh I love it! I love drawing and being funny.’ There is some sort of innate joy in it.”

Since then, illustration has become Ruby’s full-time job and that complicates matters somewhat. As she puts it: “Once it’s a job, other factors pour into it.” Yet she has still tried to hold onto that childlike sense of joy in creation. Partly, she has done this by cultivating a sketchy, carefree style. “I think a lot of what is appealing about my work is that it looks imperfect and non-caring in many ways, there’s a determination to not make it look ‘good’,” she says. To her, this mirrors the way that children create. “When a child draws something, they sort of narrate it – they will tell you what it is,” Ruby explains. “If they say it’s a truck, it’s a truck, no matter what they’ve drawn. It’s just their thoughts coming out visually.”

These days, Ruby runs drawing workshops for adults. It’s made her hyper-aware of the inhibitions that tend to creep in as we grow up, although there is always a satisfying moment when one of her pupils realises they can still create like they did as a kid, without worrying that they’re “not good enough” or “aren’t artistic”.

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Ruby Etc.: Recent illustration work (Copyright © Ruby Etc., 2023)

“When I reconnected with drawing again as a young adult, I had that feeling of, ‘Oh I love it! I love drawing and being funny.’ There is some sort of innate joy in it.”

Ruby Etc.
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Mason London: Story about Christmas he made when he was 5

Mason London

Anyone who knows the work of designer, illustrator and animator Mason London will know how inextricably linked his work is to the world of music. Over the years, he’s worked with a broad range of artists, from Dua Lipa to Kiefer, Kamaal Williams to Lily Allen, to name just a handful. Yet few of his fans will likely realise quite how far back his passion for visualising music truly goes.

Like any teenager worth their salt in the early 2000s, Mason downloaded a fair amount of music from Limewire. “I’d download the songs and then burn them onto a CD,” he recalls. “But it would annoy me just having a blank CD, because the cover art was always one of my favourite parts about music.” To satisfy that craving, he would design and print his own album artworks. “It’s honestly so ridiculous, because I never showed these to anyone,” he says. “But when you’re a teenager, they’re almost like decoration, aren’t they? Like having posters on the wall.”

Mason London: Curiosity Killed the Kid, an animation made when he was 16

Most of these original Mason designs are sadly lost to the annals of history, but one has survived – the one he created for Original Pirate Material by The Streets, which the designer reckons was made when he was around 17. The processes involved were more complex and analogue than you might expect – plus, they’re a real signifier of the era we’re dealing with here. “In terms of pictures, I was limited by what was in NME or The Guide in my parents’ copy of The Guardian,” says Mason, who remembers cutting out the images and Pritt Stick-ing them in place.

The typography was by far the most complicated aspect of the designs. “I wanted the text to be really crisp and look like it was professionally done,” he recalls. So, when it came to printing the track listing onto the back cover, for instance, he went to meticulous lengths. Because his parents’ printer could only handle A4 paper, he would precisely measure and line up his artwork on a sheet of A4 before running it through the printer. He remembers doing test prints to check that the positioning was spot on. “I’ve always been a total perfectionist,” says Mason. “This was like a very rudimentary version of graphic design, basically.”

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Mason London: The back of the CD he made for Original Pirate Material when he was 17

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Mason London: The front of the CD he made for Original Pirate Material

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Mason London: The inside of the CD

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Mason London: The inside of the CD

“When you’re a teenager, they’re almost like decoration, aren’t they? Like having posters on the wall.”

Mason London

Why go through all that trouble, particularly if nobody was ever going to see the fruits of this effort? “I used to buy vinyl records, even when I didn’t have a vinyl player, just because I wanted the artwork big. And often I used to buy records based purely off how much I liked the artwork,” he says. “The connection between the music and the artwork just gave it some sort of extra magic.”

To a certain degree, Mason puts his early creative tendencies down to a conscious decision his parents made. “They were very against TV,” he explains. “I obviously wanted to watch TV, because all my friends were watching TV. But I was limited to half an hour a day.” Instead, Mason’s parents encouraged him to be creative, to draw and write. At the time, perhaps unsurprisingly, the teenage Mason was unimpressed. But today, he sees the impact it had on him. “I think that by encouraging me to be creative and to enjoy using my imagination, they basically set me on the course to what I do now,” he says, “because I just have that real enjoyment of the process. It’s almost like meditation. I find it very comforting now to go and do creative stuff.”

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Mason London: Recent illustration work for composer and producer Neue Grafik (Copyright © Mason London, 2023)

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Mason London: Recent illustration work for composer and producer Neue Grafik (Copyright © Mason London, 2023)

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Mason London: Recent illustration work for composer and producer Neue Grafik (Copyright © Mason London, 2023)

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About the Author

Matt Alagiah

Matt joined It’s Nice That as editor in October 2018 and became editor-in-chief in September 2020. He was previously executive editor at Monocle magazine. Drop him a line with ideas and suggestions, or simply to say hello.

ma@itsnicethat.com

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