Forget art materials – illustrator Vector That Fox needs a bigger studio just to accommodate the animal skulls, taxidermy and framed insects that populate her home.‘The more I can get my house to feel like a natural history museum, the better,’ says the illustrator – real name, Jo Breese. ‘It’s a way to get closer to animals and study them in a situation where they can’t run away.’

It’s clear that animals are her inspiration – the gait of a bear, a bird in flight – as well as the shapes and curves of the natural world. ‘Straight lines are boring,’ she says – hence the stuffed animals and old prints in her home. ‘I think it’s important to have physical inspiration and creativity visible at all times, to enjoy the scale and texture of things. Otherwise the tech has too much control over what we see and when.’

Breese says that, for her, pictures have always said more than words. ‘I’m incredibly visual. We learn so much through pictures – I see them as the ‘bait’ to draw people in.’ Left-handed, she prefers to work on a computer, using creative software (Adobe Creative Cloud). ‘I smudge it less, it’s ingrained to work from left to right and it’s hard to break that habit.’

And that name? The distinctive ‘Vector That Fox’ brand comes from a task that was at the top of her ‘to do’ list for years – vector is a term used in illustration software to mean defining the outline of an image more accurately. ‘I have a thing for foxes – there’s something about the angle of their noses in side profile that I really like. I wanted something creative and unusual.’

Illustrations: © Vector That Fox from Jurassic Park
Photography: © Heather Bull