HAYLEY WARNHAM ILLUSTRATION
Bringing old Black & White photos back to life illustrator Hayley Warnham adds colour and quirk to found family images injecting new life and a touch of humour.
Tell us a bit about your style?
I work predominantly through Collage, whether it be by hand or digitally mainly because I enjoy having the freedom to work with layout and composition without having to commit straight away. It also suits my perfectionist tendencies.
Where did you find the images for the Everything is Beautiful series?
All the images in the series are photos taken by my Granddad in his younger days. He passed them all over to me in a small suitcase and I fell in love with them straight away. A lot of them feature my family, including my Mum as a toddler.
What was the inspiration behind them?
I really love old Black & White photography, and I particularly loved how all the photos were square rather than rectangular. I worked digitally so not to damage the original photographs, and I wanted to inject a sense of life and atmosphere into them. I had the idea to overlay vibrant colours and textures to highlight particular elements of the photograph and the first piece I created (and my favourite) was with the pigeons, I feel it truly captures what this series is all about, how when you start to take notice, everything really is beautiful.
What would be your dream client or commission?
I’d love the opportunity to adapt my collage work to a really large scale, maybe a shop window or a big wall mural. I’m also considering putting all of the Everything is Beautiful series together as a book, but at the moment it’s still growing so that’ll have to wait a while.
