Emma Dibben
Emma Dibben is an illustrator who is best known for her food illustrations, in particular the work she has done for Waitrose. She talks to Jo Davies, author of the OCA Illustration course which opens for enrolments in March and a forthcoming book, ‘Making Great Illustration’ to be published by A&C Black.
JD: Did you find that the people who commissioned your work initially, were they picking up on aspects of your work you were hoping to promote anyway?
ED: When I did my foundation year I did a big project on food and then it was right at the end of my degree I thought ‘I really enjoyed doing that I think I will do a couple of mock-ups for food magazines’ and it all went from there really.
JD: Do you find that you are mainly defined by food now, is that how you are being labelled?
ED: Yes, definitely, and I think that if people call me and they want me to do a portrait, then I have to send them some samples of that kind of work first otherwise they will be expecting something quite different. They see the food work and think that they would like something quite realistic and free whereas when I do people work my characters are quite distorted and stylised, so I just have to warn people.
JD: Do you prefer to work drawing from life?
ED: Yes. If I had to put work in two piles I can easily see the work from pictures, the work from life is so much more three dimensional. So I have to build in the time to source the subject material.
JD: And what about your allotment…do you think your drawings have changed because you have been involved in the physical cultivation of vegetables?
ED: Well something I really want to do is draw more of the food that I have grown, with the roots and leaves still on, like runner beans with their flowers still attached, I think that would be really nice. It gives me a better understanding of what I’m drawing having seen it in its different stages. I’ve always loved drawing beetroot, it’s both my favourite vegetable to grow and draw. It’s really juicy and I use juices sometimes in my work.
JD: As well as using juices are you using watercolours in your food work?
ED: Gouache . I do a pencil line drawing, then go over it with Indian ink and then leave that to dry, then use to gouache to paint.
JD: And what sort of scale are you working at compared to the reproduced image.
ED: Roughly the same, sometimes Waitrose do reduce the images slightly which is fine. Typically I work at about lifesize, but you do have to factor in the need for the image to be scanned.