Tim Reedy: Life as a deaf professional artist and my new Halloween eBook – released this week!

I am a profoundly deaf professional artist and I have worked on various commissions such as books and trade journals. I have also taught a lot of Illustration Workshops for primary schoolchildren in Walthamstow, where I live.

I am 48 years old; I wasn’t born deaf and lost my hearing from meningitis at aged 4. I come from a hearing family and it was actually my Father who taught me how to draw. My father was a watercolour artist, so it was only natural that I would soon become an artist myself. His studio was surrounded by watercolours, watercolour papers, sketchbooks, pens of all sorts–fountain pens, drawing pens, marker pens and line markers. He gave me my first sketchbook and pens aged 7 and always let me use his watercolours.

I was educated at Mary Hare Grammar School and I hold an MA degree in Art History. University was interesting. I really enjoyed it at Camberwell College of Arts where I studied for a BA in the History of Drawing and Printmaking. We were a small group and we all got on with each other, which is always good. I had very good friends who always made me feel included in social events and parties and I learnt sign language a few years later so I could mix with the deaf community too.

As an artist I usually use pen – all sorts of pens – line markers of varying thickness/watercolour pens/brush markers/alcohol based markers and ink for my drawing and use various papers; sketchbooks, watercolour papers of varying thickness; watercolour paints, scissors and glue; stanley knives.

As I am about to launch an eBook I have been recently using an iPad for my designs. I have enjoyed that very much. I would say I am very good with my choice of colour, thickness of line and attention to detail. I carry a notebook and write ideas or little catchphrases. I also use drawing apps on my iPhone and my two favourite apps are Dropbox and Bear (an app-based notebook for my ideas, scripts, story ideas, plots, names, jokes, puns, blog content ideas etc). I would say writing is an important part of being an artist.

My art style is cartoon-like with bright colours and thick pen lines for clients to ‘read’ and ‘understand’ my work. For example, children like cartoons and bright colours. Thus, it makes sense to convey ideas using cartoons.

I haven’t really experienced any challenges with clients due to my deafness, because I explain to them the nature of my deafness and actually most of my business is conducted via email or social media. However, I do use lipspeakers for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) meetings and seminars when I am with hearing people.

I was actually the first ever winner of the Barbican’s (in partnership with my local art community centre) ‘Ideas Kitchen’ initiative. I had to pitch my idea to a room of two hundred people for five minutes – competing with four others – and I won the opportunity to host a cartoon art workshop at the Walthamstow Garden Party over a weekend with many other workshops across the local park.

32,000 people visited the Garden Party that weekend! Though, not exclusively to see me.

I would say my real challenge was at the E17 Art Trail 2019, which is Walthamstow’s summer arts festival. I hosted 17 cartoon art workshops over two weeks. Many, many people visited and the children participating created over 750 drawings.

Talking to and following parents was very difficult. I am confident at lipreading and managed okay with the busy footfall/number of attendees but one person did speak extremely fast and I couldn’t understand her so I asked her to slow down, slowly, slowly, slower, slower, slow until she started laughing!

The whole event was a great success. I was responsible for delegating administrative tasks to volunteers and gave trainee lipspeakers the opportunity to practise communication support ahead of their exams too!

It’s true to say that the COVID pandemic has unfortunately put a stop to my workshops; schools are no longer teaching art to children too which is a disheartening fact of life today. I meet parents today and they tell me how sad they are there is no art happening. At the same time, their children who used to participate in my workshops tell me how much they like my work.

This is why I am really excited to announce that I have recently created a Halloween-themed ebook with some step-by-step drawing templates to show children (and adults, if they wish to try, too) how to draw bogeymen, witches, wizards, ghouls, bats etc. The idea is to get children drawing again and enjoy the spookiness of Halloween!

So when schools break up for halloween half-term, families are always looking for ways to keep their children busy. And with halloween being popular with children, especially children who like to draw monsters, a halloween ebook to download seems to be the way to go!

It’s my first foray into e-commerce so I am hoping it will go very well. Over a recent weekend, I finished the 65+ final sketches on an iPad and on that same iPad over 300 sketches were created in the making of this ebook. If you’re interested in purchasing the eBook you can contact me via my website or social media platforms.

I really do feel that art is a great education for children. It provides a vital platform for learning how to draw, how to hold a stylus correctly, understand colour and learning how to solve problems. It is therapeutic, great fun and should be fun. It also improves children’s communication skills when they work in groups to share ideas. Their finished piece of work is always a joy to see.

If there are any budding deaf artists reading this I would say: work hard. Be a professional; work like a professional artist; read books; read art books; read art magazines; look at art blogs; write a blog; post your work online, even if it is Instagram! It is so important to show your work to artists and clients and keep up with trends.

To find out more about Tim’s work or to enquire about his Halloween eBook go to:

https://timreedy.selz.com
Instagram _timreedy
Twitter @_timreedy
Facebook page: Tim Reedy Art
https://www.timreedyonline.com