Tim Lahan: This year I will Keep It Natural

It’s Nice That has teamed up with Squarespace to commission four illustrators to create new works that depict their new year’s resolution on a Cover Page. Cover Pages is new product from our friends at Squarespace, which allows you to create a single page website in a hassle-free way, whether it’s for a landing page or you just need something simple. We asked each illustrator to make a creative resolution for 2016 and create a new piece of work inspired by the commitment. The series kicks off today with Pennsylvania-based illustrator Tim Lahan.

This year I will Keep It Natural

“This year I will resolve to get away from the routine of work and the continual distraction of technology, and reconnect with the natural world. This resolution shouldn’t be so hard to keep as I live near a large park – there really is no excuse.

When I considered what resolution to make I had a pretty clear idea of what I would like to do in the new year to alter my creative process. Walking and being outside have a lot to do with how I work, but walking in the city and walking in the country are very different things. I lived in NYC for the past decade and having moved to the country last year, I’m excited to let my new environment find its way into my work life.

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Finding inspiration to to create my Cover Page was quite straightforward. I live near some massive trees that are hundreds of years old. It’s both intimidating and comforting to walk among them and I wanted to reflect that relationship in the imagery. There’s also a lot of visual ‘weight’ there which is a recurring theme in my work. I focus on the idea of building an image as opposed to just simply drawing it— everything has its own weight and character and can hold its own space, almost like an icon or symbol. Making several of these icons/symbols and shoving them together to make an image really interests me.

My work focuses on simplifying things. Trees and wildlife are pretty complex things visually and it’s always a challenge to break them down. Since most things in the natural world are biologically complex and full of detail, I wanted to focus on breaking them down or distilling them into icons. This makes it much easier to fill the composition with a variety of things rather than relying on recreating hyper-detailed objects. I think finding a nice silhouette for an object can be much more challenging than rendering every scale on a fish, for example.

This new work sits pretty comfortably within my wider portfolio and it adds a nice bit of green to the spectrum. 2016 will be taken up with lots of tinkering and making, as well as seeing the release of my first children’s book in the spring.”

Tim Lahan is an artist and illustrator living and working in Pennsylvania.

Check out Tim’s Cover Page here.

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