Reimagining the Winsor & Newton archive with Caitlin McCarthy

Caitlin McCarthy is an animator and illustrator known for her colourful, offbeat aesthetic and playful tone. Blending everyday humour with a bold, irreverent style, she has created work for clients including Instagram, Cheerios, MTV, Nike, and more. Most recently she collaborated with Winsor & Newton to create painted animations using colours from our themed Designer's Gouache Sets.

What was the first thing that stood out to you in the archive notebooks?

The first thing that stood out to me in the archive notebooks was the image of the perspective grid with its checkerboard pattern. A checkerboard floor is a motif I always love using, so that felt like a perfect setting. I also really liked how the bounding box around the illustration of the bust made it feel like the character's face was a flat plane, so I designed the character around that. He seemed kind of cheeky or smug to me, so I've animated him escaping someone trying to catch him.

What medium did you choose to work with?

I chose to work with watercolour pencils this time so I could incorporate lots of texture - I love seeing brushstrokes and shading lines flicker in animation and experiment with using them both wet and dry to achieve different textures. I also incorporated some gouache where I wanted to contrast with flatter colour. It was really surprising how vibrant all the pigments were in the old watercolour swatches, so I wanted to match that vibrance in my piece, using lots of bright colours.

What was your experience of working analogue for this project?

It's always such a joy working analogue for me, without being able to instantly undo a mistake or change my mind about a colour. I ended up doing two iterations of the hand animation using different colours and techniques because I couldn't make my mind up, but I didn't mind because redoing it meant having the luxury of doing more meditative colouring.