It was a total accident when I stumbled across this essay written by Suzanne Joinson (Click HERE to read the essay). At first it was the Edward Hopper image that made me think that it might be of relevance. I'd never heard of the website aeon.co before so wasn’t really sure what to expect. I read the first paragraph and thought ‘Huh this is ok’. Before I reached the 3rd paragraph I couldn’t tear myself away. I wish half the articles I've illustrated over my 10 year career were half as emotive and as powerful as this. It is a biographical account of her travels around the world as a freelance writer and, as the title suggests, the hotels she finds herself in. Joinson describes her experience of inhabiting a series faceless hotels with such unerring accuracy that any personal experiences you may have had come flooding back. Early on, Joinson describes a frightening encounter with her own psyche. In the calm of a hotel swimming pool, she experiences a voice that whispers to her to kill herself:

"For a long time, the swimming ritual was helpful. I would cleanse away London-me and become a shiny new, international person. But then in one pool, after a particularly disorientating 18-hour journey, I floated on my back, buoyed by chemicals and water, and heard an odd bright voice in my head offering up a simple suggestion. I want to die, it said. A calm, sane voice, perfectly integrated with the flickering light reflections on tiles and the sound of lapping water, of drips from the sauna room, of taps being turned on somewhere else in the building”

As an illustrator, coming across something like this is like gold dust. Finding pieces of writing with such relevance to a personal project is invaluable. Much like after watching Thunder Road, I was compelled to create images based on some of the more powerful paragraphs. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the quote above made me feel and knew I wanted to depict it somehow.

The fact that Joinson’s experience happens in a swimming pool and an area which is typically well-lit and relaxing, I thought it wouldn’t really work with the heavy shadows I have been featuring recently. After my experimentations on how to create the most tension, I thought it would be interesting to carry that on by trying to create the same emotion without the long, dark searching shadows. Due to the power of the copy, I didn’t think there would be much issue there. I am very happy with the initial attempt, and although I did do a few variations before I got to this, it certainly wasn’t a labour. I can work on the colours more to empathise the darkness, but what I like most is the dark, ghoulish shadow below the figure, distorted by the ripples in the water. This isn’t something I have played with before, but found the liquify tool on photoshop perfect for it. A bit of tinkering and you have a fairly convincing water effect. I have attached a number of images created by other illustrators to see various ways of portraying figures in water. I think showing my inspirations is an important step in the work process, however I know some illustrators are cautious about saying who has inspired them through fear of being called out on copying. My hope is that through the process of showing all my inspirations, illustrative and other, we can be more open about sampling ideas.