Art inspired by animals

Kate Chapman meets best friends Katie Ford and Amie Cooper who teamed up to produce a fun range of artwork featuring all creatures great and small.

Moths and sloths and a moose and a goose were among the fun, quirky animal drawings that Katie Ford came up with during lockdown to entertain her daughter.

The youngster told her mum she didn’t think it was right that only pretty animals were painted, so the pair set about celebrating all creatures through their artwork. Thanks to the activity, Katie rediscovered her passion for painting and after teaming up with her best friend Amie Cooper, they launched Animoo Art, creating greetings cards featuring Katie’s fun, hand painted designs.

Since then, the range has grown, and Katie’s work has been reproduced as prints and on tableware, cosmetic bags, giftware, homeware and more.

“It gives me a huge sense of pride to sell my creations and know that someone somewhere has one of our prints hanging in their house,” said mum of two Katie, who lives in Moulton, near Spalding.

“A lot of the ideas we come up with are very silly. The thing I love is seeing people’s reactions to my work and the amusement that it brings. That’s what keeps us wanting to do it – plus there’s a real fun factor of doing this with your best mate, which makes it such a joy for us too.”

Artistic flair
Katie, whose day job is farms director at A.H. Worth, near Holbeach, has always loved drawing and says art was her favourite subject at school. She completed a foundation art degree in Lincoln and then continued her artistic studies at Nottingham University.

She recalls: “I still hadn’t thought too far ahead about a career though. I loved art, and always thought I was going to do something with it, but when faced with the reality of what that might be, well that was a different proposition.

“I had to be realistic, I needed a job, so I started working for Bakkavor and stayed there for a long time. I ended up following a career in technical and then agriculture but always missed art. I still did a little in the background, although it was just messing around until we went into lockdown. Everyone had more time on their hands and the opportunity to discover hobbies and interests we didn’t usually have the time for.

“I thought I’d sit down and paint some silly pictures with my daughter. She came up with ideas for some rhyming pictures and decided that a woodlouse would be a worthy subject. This idea then expanded into some pretty curious animal pairings starting with house, mouse and woodlouse, goose and moose and guinea pigs in wigs. That was the starting point. I chatted things through with Amie and we decided to do something with it – that’s when Animoo Art was born.”

Getting creative
The pair started off creating a range of greetings cards and picked the name Animoo Art, which Katie explains relates to when her two children were younger and mistakenly called animals “animoos” instead.

She initially worked in acrylic paint but decided to try her hand at watercolour and loved its unpredictability and the blending effect she could achieve. Once dry, she finishes her work off with a fine liner to create realistic fur and add in some of the other finer details, which gives her pieces a more illustrative style.

“My inspiration comes from all animals, but we’ve found that guinea pigs are still the most popular. It always surprises me, but anything to do with guinea pigs goes really well, and sausage dogs, so they always feature in every range we do! There’s a real mix though, as we also have farm animals and wildlife.

“I seem to do a lot of domestic animals, especially dogs. I receive a lot of commissions for dogs, but it’s pretty much all animals – everything you can think of, even sloths and narwhals.

“At one point I thought it would be fun to paint the alphabet of different animals wearing different items of clothing beginning with the same letter. It went really well until we got to the Xs and Ys!”

Kate has also painted the rare African animals at Watatunga Wildlife Reserve, in Norfolk. She used photographs to recreate their likenesses, and these have been used on a collection of bespoke pieces, including coasters, chopping boards, greetings cards and bags, which are stocked in the reserve’s gift shop.

More recently she’s created a range of cards for the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary and is hoping to work with other animal sanctuaries too.

Katie and Amie (who lives in Spalding and works for Bourne-based printing company Warners), initially sold their products through Etsy, an online platform specialising in handmade, vintage and craft items, but found that due to its sheer size it was difficult to stand out and break through. Instead, they now sell their products in stores locally and further afield, online and at country shows and events such as the Burghley Horse Trials.

Katie said: “We ended up making enough stuff to do some shows. We did Sandringham Game & Craft Fair, Burghley Horse Trials and lots of Christmas markets – Stamford is always a lovely one – and it’s just grown since 2020. We started small with stationery and paper goods and now we have quite a broad range.

“We’re stocked in Birchgrove Garden Centre, Unity in Peterborough, work with another business in Burnham Market and sell wholesale through another platform. Amie looks after the business side of things – she’s far better at it than me, she’s really organised, but I guess that’s where we complement each other.

weekends and during holidays and just book time off if we have a show. We do it at our own pace. I did a lot of drawing during lockdown, I’ve got so many images, so it’s great to be able to find different ways of using them.

“Our families have also been absolutely fantastic. My parents always help out if we go to a show, everybody lends a hand, helping us set it all up.

“I’d like to think it could take up more of my time at some point, but for now we just love seeing people’s reactions to our pieces. It’s great to spread a bit of joy.”

Visit www.animooart.co.uk

Photographs: Courtesy Animoo Art

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