Lauren Mortimer

Overview

Lauren Mortimer feels inspired and content when she’s sitting somewhere quiet, perhaps looking at birds through a pair of binoculars. This can be tricky when you live in Hackney, so she’s grateful for nearby Victoria Park, Hackney Downs and London Fields. However, she also enjoys city life and the vibrancy of the area she lives in, where new things are opening all the time.

She loves folky and dreamy music, collects broaches and matchboxes, and has a twin sister called Jade who’s a filmmaker.

Training

Lauren studied Fashion Communication with Promotion at Central Saint Martins, but decided illustration would be her career. She enjoys instigating projects on her own and after graduating worked hard to put together a solid portfolio – teaching children’s art lessons along the way.

Approach

Lauren draws on cotton paper using a variety of 0.3 mechanical pencils. However she recently invested in a Cintiq tablet, which she now uses for sketching and working out her compositions. When she’s happy with something, she’ll print it out, trace it and rework it in pencil

Styles

The pencil is dominant in Lauren’s work, and with her incredible shading skills little or no colour is needed. There’s a touch of the surreal about her style as well. A brain-shaped soft ice cream… with a Flake?

Client List

• Vanity Fair
• Nespresso
• Sony
• Scholastic
• Running Press
• Penguin Young Readers Group
• BBC
• Orion Publishing Group
• Arte
• Le Monde
• Beaux Arts Magazine
• The Sunday Telegraph Magazine
• The Sunday Times Magazine
• Elle Magazine
• Guy Degrenne
• Nike
• Sony
• Nutro