Hi, I’m Helen Percival, an aspiring artist and pattern designer from Surrey in England.
My passion for art and design has been with me from an early age, starting with pencil portraits of friends and family and progressing to painting, print making and pattern design in later years.
I studied art at school to A’ level but went on to read Business Economics and Sociology at university before starting a career in IT. However, my interest in art and design never left me and I continued to enjoy art at evening classes. In 2001, I enrolled on an access course at Central Saint Martin’s and to my surprise was then accepted to do a foundation course, which introduced me to a variety of art disciplines including painting and drawing, mono-printing, sculpture, pattern design, graphic design and mixed media. This course was invaluable and since then I have spent much of my spare time exploring art and design.
Armed with IT skills accumulated over the years, I moved into the digital marketing field where I could learn more about digital communication and design. At work, I mastered aspects of digital design including website design, email marketing, website content management and administration, image design and manipulation, HTML, CSS, CMS and a variety of graphic design software. At home, I regularly cleared the dining room table and experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking and more.
Now (with my IT career mostly behind me) I mainly work in pen and ink with watercolour to create quirky cat illustrations or, combine sketching with design software to create illustrations and repeat patterns. I still clear the dining room table from time to time and grab a paintbrush or an ink roller to paint or print. Oh yes, and I build a website or two, create jewellery, run the occasional block printing workshop, sell my work at craft fairs and I’ve illustrated a book for charity!