Illustrator & Graphic Designer
This time last year I had the pleasure of designing a company logo for Tidy Construction. It is always a wonderful experience meeting a new client and working to visualise their company identity.
After a couple months in October, I was delighted the client got back in touch to request business cards featuring their new company logo. It was a joy to work with the company and even better to be thought of twice, I hope to be the first choice again for any design projects with Tidy Construction.
It has been amazing resuming the role of illustrator for this years School Mapping Project 2021, illustrating all educational buildings of Wythenshawe (up to 50 buildings! past and present). It has been an exciting challenge and I am elated to put these on the map and launch our material.
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We are proud to announce the launch of our Wythenshawe School image project in partnership with artist Faye Tikic the Neighbourhood Investment Fund, Archives + local schools. Faye is drawing every school in Wythenshawe and will include some no longer standing. This exciting project raises awareness of the history of our Town and will promote the buildings and involvement from all. We’d like pupils and students to think about their own building, draw them, take photographs alongside teachers and send to us to really shine a light on these places of learning. I will create albums for each school with Faye’s art as the cover image. We look forward to sharing your work as part of the Wythenshawe Wide School Mapping Project! Here’s a link to Faye’s page, check out her portfolio and we hope aspiring artists in our schools can get creative 
– John-Paul Coe
Wythenshawe’s schools and colleges past and present – John-Paul Coe
“It is a real honour to be able to partner fantastic artist Faye Tikic on this project. Faye not only produces wonderful images for those of all ages to enjoy but engages the local community and our schools during and after the creative process.
Via funding kindly provided by the Neighbourhood Investment Fund, Faye has undertaken the challenge to produce illustrations of Wythenshawe’s schools, colleges and some nurseries too after their response to be included. These images will sit on a map to give students and idea of local partners in education, which is vital as many do partner for important projects such as Rights Respecting events, Clean Air Day, Parliament Day and more.
https://www.intouchwythenshawe.co.uk
This project aims to have student involvement in 2022 for them to share their images and illustrations of their schools and to share what they like about the buildings, grounds and more. We try to help to sign-post local community groups, businesses and support depending on local needs and greater knowledge helps massively as does highlighting the huge network of our educational facilities.
An exciting aspect of this project is the schools no longer with us. Faye has worked alongside the amazing staff at Manchester Archives + and local residents to discover lost schools and to illustrate those also.
https://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
This project helps students with their history with local knowledge of the past, geography with locations within our five wards and many more aspects of learning include art and design with architectural topics.
We at Wythenshawe Waste Warriors will help to build a body of work, history and evidence for each school and college here in Wythenshawe. From past pupil’s photographs and memories to present day projects, we believe all are important to the community fabric of this great town.
We can’t thank Faye enough for the work produced in partnership and are looking forward to 2022 when we can visit some of our schools to workshop and to collate their contributions. Due to the many lockdowns and the recent pandemic, we will now exhibit Faye’s work alongside Wythenshawe’s student’s next year. This will be a wonderful event to look forward to for all involved in the process. Thanks Faye, NIF, Local Archive Team, The School Mapping Project, Your Local Voice and to all our Wythenshawe students and educators.”
– John-Paul Coe Founder and Chairman of Wythenshawe Waste Warriors and the School Mapping Project
Over March 2021, I had the pleasure of working with Mark Storey to begin visualising key characters involved in the first issue of his comic novel , The Metahumans.
With great communication, collaborative pinterest board’s and the help of Mark’s great character dynamic worksheet, I was able to illustrate the first 5 main characters of issue 1 within a matter of weeks. I cant wait to recieve the script of issue 1 and begin full development of the first draft.
Georgie’s Adventure is a children’s novel written by Alma Gardner 2020, written for her Grand-children. The narrative surrounds a sweet kitten and his ups and downs at his new home.
I am elated to have been the illustrator for this book. It has been a joy collaborating with Alma and bringing Georgie’s adventure to life. As a cat lover, it has been a nice change focusing on the world of Georige and it has been an uplifting project to lose myself in. The novel may be the beginning of a series, and samples of the book have been printed for potential publication.
I think we can all agree it’s been a crazy year, I’ve tried to see it as the perfect time to focus on nature and down to earth activities, exercising my creativity through photography, painting, drawing, textiles and ceramics. I don’t know if it was just me, but just doing crafts like this seemed unachievable – I was so down and tired, I had to force myself to get creative. To do this, I’d gathered my energy and set up a space on my coffee table, staring at my tools I’d realise I need inspiration, I had ongoing heavy artist block. My motivation would normally come after visiting photo albums or Pinterest. Getting started was the hard part, once I had something in mind I’d be entranced all day. I think it’s really helped my wellbeing and creative state during the pandemic, it’s very soothing and great to show something for this mad time of our lives.
Lockdown Candel Holder
I made this when I didn’t know what to do with myself; I thought it would be fitting to capture that feeling in a functional sculpture.
I made this with air drying clay, it was quite challenging but also very fun to sculpt. I made each limb individally and crosshatched the joining side with a knife, added slip (clay and water) to attach. Once I had my shape I allowed to dry and smoothed with a nail file.
Painting – A Plant Series
I painted the plants on the window sill, focusing on one in particular – exploring different colours, style and mood.
Alongside painting the plant series, I managed to convince my boyfriend, Dominic to do some with me. We followed a desert painting tutorial – this was super fun, I’m so impressed with Dom’s painting, I kept glancing at his and ruining my own from overworking it, I think we can teach each other some tips!
Needle Point – Felt sculpture
I found these crafty kits in Aldi just before lockdown – I think these were my fave, so satisfying to make. Great for a lockdown craft since they’re time consuming and engaging.
The kits provided everything I needed though I bought my own set of felt needles. I found this technique theraputic; the process of stabbing the needle into felt to structurize shape is great for de-stressing, however I found it a little mentally challenging having to poke the panda repeatedly in the eye.
Lockdown Photography
I decided to produce a series of photography, focused on what lockdown looked like. Mostly cats, coffee, walks, nature.
This time really forced us to acknowledge what is important to us, what brings us happiness when we are isolated. I found the subject matters are quite mundane but almost significant in capturing some beauty in this extraordinary time.
FAYE TIKIC 