20 Artists & IllustratorsMASTERCLASS
Wil’s process has seen him embraced by the emerging
Urban Sketchers scene: a culture of in-the-moment drawing
where the art has an unfinished quality. With a global
network of correspondents, the movement has gained a
huge amount of traction in recent years, as early-bird tickets
for the latest International Urban Sketchers Symposium in
Manchester sold out in minutes.
However, while Wil still sketches en plein air, it’s his
fascination with figure drawing that sets his work apart- even his simple crowd scenes possess a rare kind of
expressiveness and a noticeable care taken with the
human form. In the 1990s, he attended Glasgow Art
School, which at that time was caught up in a wave of
conceptual art. “I pretty much stopped drawing for the
whole of [my time at] art college,” he says.
Years later he returned to the same building for life
drawing and anatomy classes, learning how to render the
human body in his medium of choice: watercolour. It’s a
sketching style at odds with his larger artworks – where
once he was a designer trying to make it as an illustrator,
he now sees himself as an illustrator who wants to be an
artist. “I am trying to wean myself away from sketchbooks
and the sketching scene,” he tells me. “I just really want to
know how to ‘draw properly’. There’s a way of drawing and
learning how to render form, and I feel like that feeds back
into my work. With a sketch, it goes a certain way but you
ABOVE Velocity
Café (detail),
watercolour on
paper, 22x15cmwinter air, it very quickly becomes clear that Wil doesn’t just
like coffee shops, he’s become a part the city’s café culture.
As we flip through his sketchbook, he stops on a drawing
of a red headed woman. “That’s the girl who just served
us,” he smiles, pointing toward the counter.
There’s something about sketching in a shared common
space, he explains, that means the normal social laws just
don’t apply; drawing someone in a shop would feel
intrusive, but in a café, an artist becomes part of the
scenery. Although for Wil, there’s more to it than having a
room full of ready-made sitters. He believes cafés generate
a kind of social cohesion that allows art to thrive. “With the
economic downturn, [coffee] is a small luxury for people.
They spend money on it to treat themselves, but that money
might ripple out in other ways. Independently-minded coffee
shops don’t buy cups from B&Q, so you might get support
for local ceramicists or artists might get involved.”
Suitably caffeinated, Wil takes us on a tour of his
erstwhile hometown [he’s since moved to the quiet coastal
town of Gourock]. His work is an entrenched part of the city,
to be found by those who know where to look. Pass through
the turnstiles at Hillhead subway station and you’ll come
face to face with an illustrated mural he created with the
artist and author Alasdair Gray; order a drink in Laboratorio
Espresso on West Nile Street and you’ll be sipping from a
cup printed with one of his watercolours.18 Wil Freeborn.indd 20 18/02/2016 12: