I can’t recall a day when I haven’t drawn something…
Jonathan Edwards, illustrator and comic artist, has done it all: contributed to The Guardian, designed a single cover for the Black Eyed Peas, and taken Japan by storm with his signature style. All this, from Wrexham, where he lives and works with his partner and felt artist Louise Evans, aka Felt Mistress.
Jonathan Edwards by Monika Swindells
Yes, dear readers, Jonathan is something of a legend among connoisseurs of pop culture and contemporary comic and illustration art.
Just a few months ago, he brought Neighbourhood to ōH. A striking exhibition of original ink drawings inspired by urban architecture. Remarkably, it was also his first solo show. Needless to say, it was a huge success, and I couldn’t help but wonder why it took us so long to make it happen.
That experience prompted me to invite Jonathan to reflect on a series of questions about his work, inspirations, and creative process.
What follows is a feast for the curious: the first in-depth interview and intimate portrait of one of the coolest—and most humble—artists I’ve ever met.
Jonathan Edwards during the art residency at ōH.
How would you describe yourself and your work? What is your view on Jonathan Edwards?
I’m an illustrator by trade, and that was always my ambition growing up. I knew I wanted to draw comics, design characters for animation and films and illustrate books.
Over the last 30 years of my career, I’ve produced editorial illustration, textbook illustrations, record sleeves, character design, hand lettering, vinyl toys, t-shirt designs, designed murals as well as lots of paintings, sketchbook paintings and various other illustration-adjacent work that has come my way.
I hope that, despite its variations, it all still looks like the work of one person. It always makes me happy when I do a piece of commercial work and someone tells me that they immediately knew it was me. Whatever I’m producing, whether it’s character design work with Louise or watercolour landscapes, I consider it all illustration.
When did your love for drawing start?
I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil, and apparently, when I was still in a pram, my mum would give me an old catalogue and a pen to keep me amused. When a catalogue wasn’t available and I had a pen in my hand, then wallpaper was my canvas of choice!
Obviously, the urge to draw is hardwired into me, and I can’t recall a day when I haven’t drawn something. Sometimes when I’m thinking about drawing, I find myself tracing lines in the air. It’s the drawing equivalent of air guitar. I have a wooden box in the attic with some books stored in it that has a Harlem Globetrotter drawn on the side in felt pen.
I think this is the earliest drawing of mine that I still have. I think I must have been about 5 at the time. I’ve no idea why I’ve drawn a basketball player.
Obviously, they must have been on either Sesame Street or in a comic. My earliest and most abiding influences are definitely comic books and cartoons. Seeing a cartoonist or comic artist’s signature or credit on their work is probably the first time I realised that a specific artist was responsible for the work I was responding to.
I soon managed to pick out which artists’ work I liked the most, and still to this day, the same cartoonists and illustrators are big influences on my work. I was mainly looking at MAD magazine*, 2000AD* and imported Marvel comics. It was only when I went to art college at 16 that my eyes were opened to more fine art influences. I had a great lecturer there called Anton Roberts who gave as much relevance to a classic Radio Times illustrator like Robin Jacques* or an animator like Norman McLaren* as he did Rembrandt or Picasso. This had a big impact on me as I always felt like there was a barrier between illustration and Art with a capital A.
Drawing The Florist: first of the Neighbourhood series, original ink drawings.
A week after the meeting, I got my first Guide cover.
Can you share the pivotal moments in your career?
My first commission is probably the most pivotal moment:
After 4 years of art college, illustration felt more theoretical than practical. When I was 21 back in 1993, the only way you could get your work seen by art directors was to find their details in a magazine, phone the office and ask to speak to them, and either send them examples through the post or turn up on the doorstep with your portfolio. This sounds like a terrifying project now, and I can’t believe this was something I was doing from 19 onwards. There was always a Catch-22 situation where art directors liked your work, but because you’d never been commissioned, you were an unknown entity. Could you be trusted with a deadline? Would you deliver in time for that work to go to print? Remember, this was pre-Internet, so my work was painted and posted to the client, where it had to be photographed first. It seems archaic now!
After a lot of encouraging but unsuccessful interviews, I had an appointment lined up at the Radio Times. I first arrived at the wrong building (the original BBC Television Centre) and had a mad dash across Sheperds’s Bush. I arrived at the interview with seconds to spare. The Art Director was just off to a meeting, but took pity on me and said he could look at my portfolio on the way down in the lift. He was complimentary, but I thought I’d blown it.
To my surprise, just days after I had a phone call and my first illustration was commissioned for the Radio Times. An illustration for Emile Zola’s La Bête Humaine, which was being dramatised on Radio 4. The illustration needed was of a steam train in 1890s rural France.
As you can imagine, research in the early 90s was a lot different from what it is now and involved a phone call to the Railway Museum in York. This is a story in itself, which I won’t bore you with, but needless to say, it all worked out, and I had quite a few repeat jobs from the Radio Times. Also, I could now officially call myself a published illustrator.
Deadline magazine: issue 69 & 71. Covers by Jamie Hewlett and Ilya.
A few months after this, I attended the UK Comic Art Convention in London with friends from Chester. They were self-publishing their own anthology comic called Automatic, and I had two pages in the latest issue. In these days self self-publishing consisted of finding a photocopier, a guillotine and a long-arm stapler. These days, when you can upload your pages to any number of online printers and get a glossy hardback book back in a few days, the photocopied zine has a certain charming DIY aesthetic to it. The romance of making your own zines in the 90s soon wore off after a few hours kneeling on the carpet and trying to collate hundreds of sheets of paper without getting one upside down or in the wrong order. We took our zine to London, and I was amazed that people already knew about it. Steve, Gavin, Darryl and Rich, the other contributors, had been doing this for a year and already had a reputation that people were aware of.
I was a newbie, though, so the fact that anyone knew my work was hard to comprehend. One person I’d been speaking to and had seen my work in Automatic suggested I show my sketchbook to a man walking down the stairs (another informal meeting!) who turned out to be Frank Wynne*, the editor of Deadline*. Deadline at the time had a unique position in UK comics. It was a cross between a more grown-up (although that’s debatable!) version of 2000AD and The Face.
It was available in high street newsagents and WHSmiths would stock it alongside the style mags rather than in the children’s section with other comics. There was no way it was suitable for children! Its breakout character, Tank Girl - created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin*- seemed to exist in a genre all of her own. I’d been reading it since I was 17, and the thought of being in its pages was unimaginable. Frank sliced two pages out of my sketchbook (a parody of the Reservoir Dogs poster with regency dandies instead of gangsters), and a month later, it was in Deadline. The further away I get from the Deadline, the prouder I feel that I was a contributor. It still amazes me that it happened.
Tank Girl Journey to the Centre of the Tank from 21st Century Tank Girl Script Alan Martin.
Guide to Japan for a Japanese education company, ink & digital.
The next big step in my career came in 1999 when I took my portfolio along to the Guardian offices specifically to see the art director at the Guide - Sarah Habershon. I read the Guide every week, and there was always a lot of illustration featured on its cover and within its pages. A week after the meeting, I got my first Guide cover. I’d go on to have over 20 Guide covers, many interior illustrations and illustrate the Hard Sell column for over 10 years. I also produced covers for the Review, Money, Travel, and Comic sections.
I worked on almost all of these commissions with Sarah Habershon, who only left the Guardian last year. I had no idea when I turned up with my portfolio back in 1999 that I’d work with Sarah for 25 years. Time flies. At the same time that I started working at the Guardian, I started to produce a daily online comic strip for a website called Metal Is for a company owned by Iron Maiden. The strip was written by a Kerrang journalist and cartoonist called Ray Zell (whose name I didn’t realise was a pun for months until I said it out loud). It ran every day for almost 2 years. Between this and the Guardian work and all the illustration work that stemmed from being regularly seen in the Guardian, I was able to leave my part-time records shop job. I’ve made my living entirely from drawing since January 2000, and despite the stress it can cause at times, there’s nothing I’d rather do.
The Guide by the Guardian covers illustrated by Jonathan Edwards.
Can you talk us through your creative process? How do you do your research, sketching, etc?
I always start with a piece of paper and a pencil. It must be the familiarity of that medium that makes it so comfortable for me and always helps to facilitate ideas. In the old days of illustration, when art directors used to phone you up, I’d always make quick sketches and notes while we were chatting.
I’d have a rough idea of the shape I’d have to fill, and I’d sketch away while thinking through ideas with the AD. I still enjoy sketching while chatting on the phone, as it takes your mind off what you’re doing and lets you draw without giving it too much thought. I always have a ream of photocopy paper at hand, and most commissions start off with a lot of loose sketchy drawings on cheap paper before something worth pursuing emerges.
Our house is filled (and I mean filled!) with books, so there’s always inspiration close at hand. Pinterest is always a good resource, too. I have a lot of boards that I’ve compiled for inspiration - illustration, painters, printmaking, fashion, architecture, sculpture, etc. I really enjoy the research process. The right detail can really elevate an illustration.
A few years ago, I had to produce an illustration of a 1930s Cardiff shop front which would be printed life-size on a corridor wall. I was given one blurry black and white photo of part of the shop and had to extrapolate from that the entire shop front, including all its window displays and ads. I spend days and days searching online and in books to find all the correct details. It would have killed me if I’d had included some anachronistic detail. You don’t have to use everything you find, as that could become quite dry and uninspired, but one or two authentic details can really make an illustration. Once the idea, composition and details are worked out, I start working on the final piece. This will start as a pencil drawing, and I will keep refining it until I’m happy to move on to the finished illustration.
A recent change to this process is taking a photo of the sketch on my phone, importing it into Procreate on the iPad Pro and then cutting up the sketch, moving things around, flipping the image and drawing over the top. This way, I can keep refining the image. I can then print out the amended sketch and lightbox it onto paper. Mixing traditional and digital methods in this way is really pleasing. I think it’s helped me improve, too. Sometimes mistakes appear a lot more noticeable when you view them on a screen. I’ve no idea why!
Tell us more about your love for Japan, how it started & how it became the source of your inspiration.
I’ve been trying to figure out where my love of Japan first came from. Anime and Manga weren’t a thing in the UK when I was growing up. I loved the cartoon Battle of the Planets, but I had no idea that it was a dubbed American version of the Japanese series Gatchaman. Brother, the Japanese company had opened a factory in my hometown of Wrexham and had donated a lot of books about Japan to the local library.
During my first year in art college, when choosing a country for a project, I was immediately drawn to the books on Japan. There was something about the woodblock prints that really resonated with me. In art history lectures, we’d be told about the Japanese influence on artists such as Degas and Whistler, and this intrigued me even more. Their compositions were cropped in a way that was very influenced by Japanese woodblock artists, and I suppose I could relate to this because it reminded me of comic book panels or the way films are framed.
We eventually visited Japan in 2005, and from the moment we landed, we knew we’d be coming back again and again. I remember walking through passport control and seeing a group of men and women in uniform behind a desk, and it looked like a still from a film. The colour palette felt so different to the UK - greys, blues and shades of turquoise. Retro, but at the same time very modern. There’s an Instagram account called Accidentally Wes Anderson, and looking back, it feels like one of their posts.
There was so much to discover in Japan. A whole world of illustrators, designers, architects, musicians and film-makers that I wasn’t aware of. It was mind-blowing. Even after 20 years of trips, it still amazes me.
Last year, our friend Katsuya took us to an exhibition of an artist I like called Aquirax Uno*. I expected one small room of originals, but instead it was room after room of illustrations, posters. Magazine covers, theatre props, paintings and drawings. The earliest from when he was a teenager in the 1940s to a record cover designed only last year in his 90s. So inspiring. We love just wandering around the backstreets of Tokyo or Kyoto and finding shops selling old toys, books, fabric and random Japanese design ephemera. It never disappoints.
Two of the most iconic watercolours of Japan by Jonathan: Cherry Blossom, Tokyo and Takoyaki, Osaka
There’s a lot to learn from record sleeves.
Your work is very much pop culture-driven. What are your influences when it comes to music, art, fashion, and people?
I’ve also listened to music. I grew up in a pub, and my mum was in charge of curating the jukebox, so from an early age, music was constantly in the background. I had a fairly autonomous childhood as my parents were working behind the bar and watched a lot of TV while I was drawing.
When I was about 7, there was a season of Beatles films on BBC2, and that was the beginning of my Beatles obsession. Apart from the music there was so much more to be inspired by - their early monochromatic publicity shots and the photos taken of them in Hamburg by Astrid Kirchner, Klaus Voormann’s illustration for the cover of Revolver, Heinz Edelmann’s designs for the Yellow Submarine cartoon, their ability to reinvent themselves but still retain their unmistakable “Beatleness”. It was all very inspiring, especially when I discovered it all started just up the road in Liverpool.
Music became a real passion in my teens, and all the music I liked - The Smiths, The Fall, New Order, Prince, Talking Heads, Kate Bush, REM, Cocteau Twins, Beastie Boys. Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, and Serge Gainsbourg also seemed to have a strong visual element. The record sleeves were just as exciting as what was contained within them. From Smiths records, I discovered Jean Cocteau, Shelagh Delaney, and Alain Delon. The Beastie Boys magazine, Grand Royal*, introduced me to the work of Vaughn Bode, Mike Mills, Eric Haze, etc.
New Order’s sleeves were designed by Peter Saville*. REM and Talking Heads featured Reverend Howard Finster paintings on their sleeves, and 4AD sleeves were designed by Vaughan Oliver and Simon Larbalestier. There’s a lot to learn from record sleeves.
Then, when I discovered Blue Note* records and the work of Reid Miles, this led me even further down a record sleeve rabbit hole. There are a LOT of books on our shelves dedicated to album covers. Louise studied fashion at University, so she was introducing me to all the stuff she liked. Through Louise, I learnt about Galliano, Dior, and McQueen. the milliner Philip Treacy, etc, etc. It all adds to the mix.
Sometimes, when you’re looking for inspiration, it comes from the most unexpected places. Years ago when I was trying to come up with a comic I’d drawn (A Bag of Anteaters - a coming of age story set on The Wirral and written by my friend Ian Carney) I was hitting a brick wall until I was flicking through a Taschen book of vintage food graphics and I saw the box for a brand of popcorn called Screaming Yellow Zonkers. I don’t know whether the inspiration is obvious when you see my cover, but it was definitely the spark that solved that creative block.
This is why it’s important to look everywhere for inspiration. The last few years, I’ve become a bit obsessed with 1960s/70s public art and, in particular, the work of William Mitchell. There’s always new stuff out there, even if it’s old, if you see what I mean.
Black Eyed Peas Single cover for “My humps”.
The collector’s edition cover for the Archipelagogo Soundtrack by Andy Votel*.
“A bag of Antheaters” book cover by Jonathan, written by Ian Carney.
The Glasto tag by Jonathan for the Guide.
What was the most challenging/ exciting project you worked on so far?
I think it would have to be the Hankyu windows in Osaka.
We’d signed with our agent in Tokyo back in 2018, and between us and them had come up with a group of characters called The Mistress 5. Hankyu is one of the most prestigious department stores in Japan, and its flagship store in Osaka has seven gigantic windows.
We were asked to fill the windows to advertise their Spring/Summer range for February 2022. This included illustration, FM characters, animation, short films and collaborations for Japanese fashion models and actors. Louise’s metre-tall versions of the characters had already been sent to Japan, and they had all been reproduced as life-size mascot costumes. They were so accurate that in some photos it was hard to tell which were Louise’s originals and which were the costumes unless there was something next to them for scale. We expected nothing less of Japan!
I had to produce two short animations to be shown in the window. I tried my best to wriggle out of this, as it was something I had no experience in at all. I’d worked on character designs for animation, but that was the extent of my involvement. I worked with A Productions in Bristol, a company I’d worked with previously, and with their help, I created two short animated films to be shown in the windows and online. It was a particularly difficult time to be working on something this big, as my mum was terminally ill and the deadline for the work was right at the beginning of January, so I had to work all over Christmas. I even received notes and alterations on Christmas morning. I’m not sure how I got through it, but I did.
The windows were launched during the tail end of the lockdown, so even if our personal circumstances had been better, there was no way we could have gone to Japan and seen them for real. We had to enjoy it all vicariously online. Friends in Osaka visited the store and sent us photographs, but it wasn’t until we visited Osaka again in 2024 that we got a full sense of how big a job it was. I stood next to those massive windows and tried to imagine what it would have been like to see our work in all 7 of them. It’s nice to look back on this project now, but it was such hard work at the time.
Hankyu project by Jonathan and Felt Mistress
Is there a dream project you would like to be commissioned for?
I’d love to see Felt Mistress characters get their own series. We’ve had interest a few times, so hopefully one day it’ll happen.
Other than that, I’d like to do an album cover or film poster for a musician/ band or filmmaker I admire. It’s always exciting to see your work in a different environment. On the walls outside a cinema or in the racks of a record shop are two of my preferred locations.
How does working with Felt Mistress influence your work?
I enjoy the separation that’s involved when I’m working with Louise. When I’m tidying my desk and putting scrap paper in the recycling, Louise will often come along and sift through it in case she sees potential in anything I’ve absentmindedly sketched. Louise will often use that as a springboard for a character she’s making, and I always love that aspect of the process.
Louise works entirely in 3D, and I work 2D, and both of us have to consider the limitations is an interesting challenge. I have to think about how a character I’ve drawn will look when you can walk around it in a gallery setting, and Louise has to take into account how readable a character is if it’s photographed and viewed only on a poster or in a book.
We enjoy playing around with the lighting of the figures, and because of the way Louise creates 3D shapes with felt, you can get some really dynamic shadows. I can see the shadows I put in my work reflected in the lighting of the figures, and then see the effect that has on the way I draw shadows afterwards. It’s a really rewarding to-and-fro process.
Working on Archipelagogo with Felt Mistress.
Working on paper is so much different from working with digital tools as well. Do you have a preference?
I’ve always been a piece of paper and a pencil person, but I must admit that Procreate on the iPad Pro, along with Apple Penci,l has really turned my head. I think it’s the shape and size of the iPad and how much it feels like drawing in my sketchbook.
Back in early 2022, I was diagnosed with cancer and as part of my treatment, I had to spend 5 days at a time in hospital in Bangor on and off for a few months while receiving chemotherapy. Obviously, it would be extremely difficult to take my inks and watercolour,so I decided that I would spend more time drawing in Procreate on the iPad. I discovered from the stats on my iPad that I’d been drawing for over 7 hours a day!
There was a real concern that the type of treatment I was receiving would cause me to lose the sensation in my fingertips and would make it very difficult for me to draw and paint. As you can imagine, this would have been catastrophic. The constant drawing, as well as keeping me sane and taking my mind off what was going on, also kept my hands active and prevented nerve damage.
If there was any good to come out of that situation, then it was the fact that I’d been able to sharpen my skills while not being able to do much else. I produced an entire book of drawings, called “Wanderlust”, of places I’d been in the past from photos on my phone while lying in my hospital bed. This also really emphasised how important drawing was to me and how good making stuff is for your general mental health.
I’ve used a computer in my work since the late 90s, but I was always drawing traditionally, scanning the image and then colouring it using Photoshop. I think it’s only the last 5 years where I’ve produced commercial illustration work entirely digitally. Sometimes it’s essential, and there’s no way I could supply what the client wants any other way.
In the old days (the mid-90s!) when I started, everything about the final illustration had to be agreed upon before the final piece was started, but due to the way people work now, that’s all changed. Colour schemes and entire parts of the illustration can be changed very drastically and very quickly.
The recent Lion King poster I did for Disney had to be submitted as separate layers - foreground, characters, background, etc - and even though it was my watercolour work that brought them to me, I had to supply the artwork digitally. In the past, I’ve had to Lightbox separate elements, paste them together - literally in some cases - and give myself a headache trying to work out how a pile of differently sized drawings would all fit together using a scanner and Photoshop. It would be so much easier now!
I enjoy the aspect of being able to open a new layer and keep redrawing and simplifying the same drawing. It works really well with likenesses, where I get it in a loose sketch, and I can use those lines and keep refining.
Recent work for Disney Mufasa movie. Courtesy of Jonathan.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working with a computer game company in Kyoto on logo design for a new game, which is something I haven’t done before. I’ve approached it in a more illustrative way rather than purely typographically.
There’s always a Felt Mistress project percolating in the background, and currently we’re working on an exhibition of stone gods made in felt. It’ll all make sense when you see it.
Apart from that, I’m going to put together another book of travel drawings featuring drawings from Europe - Venice, Bilbao, Haarlem, Prague, Lisbon, etc. I’d look to return to comics, too and work on my own graphic novel.
Comics are my first love, and nothing is as satisfying as drawing a page of comics. There’s nothing like it.
What makes a good illustrator?
On a purely creative level, you have to be good with ideas, flexible in your approach and have an eclectic interest in illustration and art in all its forms, but to be able to do the job itself, it takes another set of skills.
I think you have to be tenacious. It’s a constant hustle, and sometimes the thought of a regular weekly wage is very tempting. Financially, it’s always a series of peaks and troughs. You also need to be good with deadlines. My friend John’s advice to new comic artists/illustrators is always the same: “Get good. Get quick. Get good and quick.” I can’t really improve on that!
REFERENCES* If you are interested in digging deeper…
The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival: painting Aira Force timelapse
Jonathan connecting Wales and Japan
Frank Wynne & Deadline magazine
Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin
