Abigail Challis

Illustration - BA (Hons)

Hello! My name is Abigail and I am a British/Australian illustrator who is currently based in Cambridge.

I have been passionate about art ever since I was young – I would spend countless hours drawing my favourite characters, making silly collages on my Nan’s kitchen floor and designing magazines with my younger sister. I would also make animations in PowerPoint by drawing objects using simple shapes and scrolling through the slides really fast. It was not until my mum gave me her old drawing tablet that I began to take illustration more seriously.

In my final year of illustration, we went on a drawing trip to Lisbon. It was during this time that I discovered how much I enjoyed working with analogue materials, particularly gouache and coloured pencils. I found that I was able to create a better variety of textures and lines. It felt really rewarding to have the physical work in front of me rather than it only existing on a screen, and I decided to implement this technique into my two final projects.

My first project is inspired by my dreams. I have always been a very vivid dreamer and decided to make use of this to illustrate a small booklet containing aspects of various dreams I’ve had over the years. It has always frustrated me that others cannot see my dreams the same way that I can and I wanted to do something to change this.

For my second project, I wanted to experiment more with animation and decided to make a short ad-length video to raise awareness of the kākāpō, an endangered species of bird in New Zealand. I really enjoyed this project and would like to work more with animation in the future.