Getting to know the Bees! Robin Lawrie
20 February 2024
It has been a pleasure to represent Robin Lawrie for the last 18 years. His career which has spanned for almost 50 years has seen him work with many of the leading publishers. He is able to approach both classic and contemporary subjects with a characteristic lightness of touch.
"Robin and I have worked on various trade and school book projects for many years. He's always reliable, highly skilled and fun to work with."
Bob Swan - Blue Dog Design Studio
Please can you tell us where you are from and where do you currently live and work? Has this effected your work?
I was born and spent the first few years of my life in Scotland. I moved with my family to Vancouver, Canada in the mid fifties. For the past twenty years or so I've lived and worked up the side of a hill in Shropshire on the Welsh borders. It's a beautiful part of the world and of course does influence my work in the same way as my work was influenced when I spent twenty years in London in my early career in the sixties and seventies.
Who or what inspired you to be an illustrator?
Early influences were my two cousins who were art directors in London and Glasgow in the fifties and were a great help to me in my early career. The fifties and sixties in North America was a great time for illustration before reproduction of colour photography really got going so magazine illustrations such as the wonderful Norman Rockwell and automobile advertising illustrators Arthur Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman were big influences and inspired me to do quite a lot of commissioned car portraiture.
What is a typical day in the studio like for you?
There is no typical studio day for me at the moment. I had a fifty year stretch when one commission just followed another and I was working constantly but now things are a bit more relaxed and I spend as much time managing my little four acre forest as I do in the studio where I mainly keep my hand in doing small acrylic landscapes.
Do you have a favourite piece in your portfolio or a particular Beehive project that you have enjoyed if so could you share it and talk about it?
My favourite portfolio pieces would be the mountain bike racing illustrations I did for an 18 book series for Evans Brothers a while back. They depict a particularly happy period in my life when my son and I raced mountain bikes almost every weekend - crazy times but fun!
Has your illustration changed over time?
I couldn't say whether my has changed or not over the years since I feel I never really developed a particular and changed it to suit whatever job I was on. Recently I've enjoyed working digitally with an Apple pencil and Procreate software.
What advice would you give to an aspiring artist?
Advice to aspiring illustrators, never give up and keep drawing when you have a spare minute.
