Limited Edition Art of Rob Palmer
My Story
Creative Director by day, artist and illustrator by night.
I started life in a small country village in the North East of England. It was here I was educated in my early years and fundamentally found my passion for the arts.
My memories of growing up were of country fields, farms, evenings spent climbing trees, exploring woodlands and roaming the countryside on childhood adventures. The feelings bestowed to me in these younger days have stayed with me through my career and are a direct root of emotion portrayed in my work today.
It was this early stage in my life where I found that creating things brought out the best in me. Whether it was sketching, building models, painting or illustrating, something about expressing my feelings in an artistic form made sense. I was always at my happiest when I was creatively engaged.
Through later education I studied the Arts, Product Design, Technology and basic Electronics. This wide scope of knowledge gave me the ability to apply creative thinking not just as a passive hobby, but to real world scenarios.
In my early art I strived for perfect realism, focusing heavily on still life and portraits. I regularly expressed my work using a range of mixed media, traditionally crafted through metal and woodworking. Getting hands on with real materials taught me to value the simplistic forms of basic shapes, and the power they can portray in a scene.
When it came to deciding on a career, a qualification in Multimedia design and my knowledge and background in electronics led me in to the digital industry. Here my love for making something not only look good, but function, landed me a job as graphic and web designer.
In 2005 I set out on a mission. I wanted to bring the personality and style I captured with traditional media into a digital space. It was at this time that ‘accessibility’ was the driving force for everything on the web, so my niche was to make highly accessible websites fun and engaging by bringing environments and illustration to the forefront of the user experience.
It was around this time that my work started to transition from pure realism into the metaphorical and naïve style seen in my most recent work. I was working in an environment with new boundaries, and lots of rules to break, giving me a platform to experiment and pave a direction. I had in front of me not a canvas or a workshop, but a user interface whose success hinged on how well my work was executed and if it made sense to the experience.
My early website work set the grounds for a decade of web and mobile design experience, being featured in a range of publications include .Net magazine, Computer Arts and Web Designer magazine, along with fantastic online recognition on a number of design gallery sites.
As an Illustrator
In early 2015 I started to pine for my roots as a traditional artist and illustrator. My freelance was becoming an extension of my day job, and this was proving trying on both. I needed to inject more variety into my personal work, to reinvent myself and renew my love for illustrative work.
So I set about shifting direction. To rekindle a passion for the printed domain and to create pieces of art for others that echoed what I am about, my work and how I want to represent it. This is when A Sheep’s Life was born.
My style takes influence from some of my favourite naïve artists such as Henri Rousseau, Jo March, Doug Hyde and Peter Smith. My work uses bright vibrant palettes and simplistic shapes to create impact pieces based around fun and emotive characters.
I have developed a heavy based texture on all my art using a controlled set of brushes that have been perfected over many years. They have been built up so when printed, offer a feeling of originality and depth to mimic traditional methods.
As a Creative Director
Being the Creative Director at Fueled, a mobile app design and development shop with locations in New York, LA and London, I head up a team of talented designers who every day create cutting edge digital solutions for entrepreneurs and international brands alike.
Keeping my attention on illustration in my spare time allows me to focus my passion for everything digital in my full time job.
The balance for me is superb, through the day I get to do what I love, being at the forefront of technology creating digital innovative solutions for amazing clients, and then in my spare time get to illustrate whatever is on my mind. I feel very lucky.
Hire Me
If you would like to discuss any of my work on this site, or if you are interested in commissioning a one off piece, please get in touch using the contact form and selecting the 'Work with me' option. I am also available for small digital projects, branding work or one off illustration pieces.
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