Colleen Tighe: The Newest Illustrator of BPB’s Header Picture!

I’m delight­ed to share the newest head­er pic­ture for the Brown Paper Bag. Colleen Tighe, a Brook­lyn-based illus­tra­tor, has cre­at­ed this gor­geous illus­tra­tion of girls play­ing with mar­bles. I love the tex­ture and sub­tle nature of the image.

Ler­an more about Colleen and the illus­tra­tion below. As always, the work is for sale in the Brown Paper Bag shop as a 4″ x 6″ print — per­fect for fram­ing! Grab one before they’re all gone.

Loca­tion: Brook­lyn, NY
Web­site: www.colleentigheart.com
What was your dream job when you were 7 years old? I want­ed to be an artist, nov­el­ist, and vet. I’m at least one of those, and I live with some­one else’s dog, so 1.2/3 isn’t bad.
Your pro­fes­sion now: Hope­ful illus­tra­tor and a cus­tomer ser­vice email robot on the side
What’s your favorite thing to draw? Oh hm, I’ve always had a thing with hair, I love draw­ing hair, and I like draw­ing sim­ple repet­i­tive pat­terns on things. I’ll end up doo­dling lit­tle flow­ers and leaves over everything.
How did you cre­ate your illus­tra­tion? Was it any dif­fer­ent than your reg­u­lar process? No dif­fer­ent than my usu­al process. I do a sort of pho­to­shop col­lage now, where I’ll block in the image on Pho­to­shop with flat col­ors and cre­ate the shapes of the peo­ple or objects, and then I go back and add in tex­tures I’ve scanned in and brush­es I have in Pho­to­shop, and then I’ll add the lines and defin­ing fea­tures last.
You men­tioned to me that you were inspired by the Mar­garet Atwood book titled Cat’s Eye. Can you describe what that sto­ry is about and how it influ­enced your illus­tra­tion? Cat’s Eye fol­lows the life of a woman named Elaine from her child­hood to her present day life, cut­ting back and forth from the past to the present. It focus­es on a lot of things, but espe­cial­ly women and their friend­ships. I found the most inter­est­ing parts were of her child­hood. Elaine has a manip­u­la­tive and abu­sive best friend, and it shows how weird and dis­ori­ent­ing it is as a child to expe­ri­ence that, and how intense tox­ic friend­ships can be. This illus­tra­tion was inspired by that rela­tion­ship, and Cat’s Eye comes from the cat’s eye mar­ble Elaine car­ries with her, so that’s where the mar­ble cir­cle came from.
Do you have any excit­ing projects on the hori­zon? Cur­rent­ly I don’t! I’m doing anoth­er Mar­garet Atwood inspired piece for the sec­ond vol­ume of Ladies of Lit­er­a­ture, a great zine, that will be com­ing out I think some­time in ear­ly 2015. Besides that, I grad­u­at­ed from art school in the spring and I’ve been try­ing to let myself get real­ly inward and exper­i­ment with my stuff pri­vate­ly to try to fig­ure out what I want to do with­out the pres­sure of show­ing it on the inter­net or to a group of peo­ple. I would actu­al­ly love to con­tin­ue on this theme of young girls and games, though, and cre­ate some more pic­tures based on that.