Creative frustration leads to a new career

by Ann Packer

Lockdown was the impetus for more than one career change. For Covid returnee Lily Uivel, leaving behind a London lifestyle meant the chance to develop her skills as an illustrator, particularly of children’s books.

Grabbing one of the last flights out of the UK, she and partner Rory Stewart returned to New Zealand, and have subsequently bought their first home, a midcentury hillside house designed and lived in by the late Eastbourne architect Hal Wagstaff.

A graduate of Auckland University Elam School of Fine Arts, Lily worked in her family’s Miramar props workshop, Human Dynamo, before heading off on her OE.

Working in London as a furniture maker and feeling creatively frustrated, she started attending life drawing classes, teaching herself to draw – something not covered in her degree – and staying up late every night working on her craft.

Had she followed the illustration route at university, rather than fine arts, she notes, there would have been time to play and find her own style. Instead, she invested in digital technology, and started “chipping away at being an illustrator” in her evenings. Although her work looks hand-drawn, it’s created digitally on a laptop and iPad using Photoshop, Illustrator and Procreate.

Being able to work uninterrupted during lockdown on a portfolio to present to publishers was a blessing in disguise for this grandchild of Dutch immigrants, who met on board ship on their way here in the 1950s.

She has illustrated two books so far for Penguin Random House, featuring Lulu and her Dance Detectives (authored by Sally Sutton), and has created a stunning cover and interior illustrations for Fleur Beale’s fairytale fantasy Once Upon a Wickedness, due out later this year. Five picture books include Eye Spyclops and Celia Seagull and the Plastic Sea (Little Love). She is represented by illustrators’ agent, Sandra Morris.

Last Christmas, she had the pleasure of working on Wellington’s annual Advent Calendar, in which capital businesses –including the East By West Ferry – make special offers.

Moving to Eastbourne, Lily was delighted to discover another author-illustrator, Kimberly Andrews.

“It can be rare to connect with other illustrators, so it was great to discover another artist living right here in the bays.”

“Illustrators are storytellers in their own right,” she insists, echoing a theme from this year’s Featherston Booktown, where she worked with kaumātua picture book artists

Gavin Bishop and Martin Baynton in the Young Readers’ Programme Speed Date an Illustrator. “They build the world for a story to live in.” With five nephews and a niece within reading distance, there’s plenty of feedback to be had when sharing her work. Who knows, this rising star may even create her own illustrated worlds as well as illustrating others’, just as her mentors have done.