Poster Passion - Katy Austin on music-inspired illustration
Combining her devotion to music and risograph printing, illustrator Katy Austin is coming to an album sleeve near you
Watching a music video on YouTube, with a very modest amount of views, for emo-rock group Aylith’s Flag the only post in the comment section rather sums up the whole experience.
“The animation is better than the music…”, says ‘Talia’, whose winking smiley-face emoticon adds insult to injury for the Kent group. However, it is not untrue. The illustrations for the Dirty Money track were created by the band’s bassist Katy Austin (@katyaustinart).
“Ha! No, we were terrible,” she laughs when asked to regale the fortunes of the band. But echoing the poignant comment by the YouTube user, Katy’s artwork is definitely the silver lining.
An illustrator and animator who specialises in event and gig posters, band merch and music artwork, Katy’s style caught our eye and her work with some county acts was already on our radar - though we didn’t know it at the time.
The cover art for debut EP Ode To the Sleepers by Folkestone rockers Pyx was designed by Katy and featured in ‘cene’s New Music Friday round-up back in 2020.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with local acts,” she says. “I really enjoy that creative freedom and especially like Pyx because they have a lot of pop-culture references in their work.
“I’ve listened to the songs and asked them if there’s anything they want me to base the artwork on. The first-ever commission I did for them was on a song called The Movies and it was based on Kiss of a Spiderwoman - it was one of the first queer films in that genre, so that was amazing to work on.”
Looking at Katy’s work, it doesn’t take much to see that a passion for emo music inspires her works and she has even had so-called ‘fan artwork’ receive attention, with her piece for the My Chemical Romance reunion piece used by Alternative Press, while Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins posted one of her ‘doodles’ of him to his considerable following.
Having studied illustration and animation at UCA, Katy continued onto her Master’s degree and now even works at the Canterbury campus as a specialist risograph technician.
Yeah, we didn’t have a clue, either.
“It’s the love of my life,” says Katy. “Risograph printing is very similar to screen printing in that you only print one colour at a time but from a digital printer with one ink that you pull out and change to whatever colour you want.
“I love the textures. It breaks up the image - it’s quite playful in that sense. It has helped my work in that when you think about layers of colour you become more mature in a way, because there is more process. It’s very much less-is-more.”
Drawing on to a tablet screen and then separating the colours on Photoshop means Katy can get creative with the riso.
“The ink is really cool - it’s slightly transparent, so they blend and you can make new colours,” she says.
Taking inspiration from magazines and religious imagery - which she says plays a massive part in all her work - ideas can form anywhere.
“My favourite is my The Used poster – it’s my baby,” she explains. “It was the one where I realised this was what I wanted to do. I was at the gig and afterwards everyone crowded round them and it was like this religious cult experience. I found this National Geographic magazine in a charity shop and it was all about worship and I based the poster on the images I found there.”
A source of rare pictures and posters, Pinterest also provides a good hunting ground for inspiration, but it is the music itself that drives her passion to create.
“My goal is always to be commissioned by the musicians or artists rather than sell my own prints.”
INFO: katyaustinart.co.uk
