It’s impossible to visit the homepage of Welsh illustrator Tom Hovey’s website without working up an appetite. From mouth-watering burgers to boozy ice creams, he’s drawn up a dream menu of delicious foods throughout his career.
Even if you don’t know Hovey by name, you’ll have seen his infamous illustrations on TV every year during the Great British Bake Off. He’s illustrated the showstoppers and signatures since the very first season of the show aired back in 2010, but his subject matter wasn’t always of the foodie variety.
Hovey remembers how drawing was just one of those things he could always focus on when he was young, a quality that he recognises now in his own children. He was never really interested in anything else and was set on doing “an art thing”.
Since his parents weren’t necessarily what you’d call “arty people”, his perception of art was limited to big, grand formats. The term illustration didn’t even cross his path until sixth form college, where he studied art and design and discovered some books on British illustrator Ralph Steadman and professional cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.
Even with some newfound inspiration, Hovey was still unsure where his passion for drawing could take him.
Despite having little interest in comics, he opted to do an HND in Sequential Illustration before going on to study Illustration at Bournemouth University. “The HND gave me a work ethic and base knowledge of storyboarding, which I’ve used in a few jobs,” says Hovey.
His early reading of Steadman and Scarfe inspired him to create political illustrations throughout university. While Scarfe is known for his work as an editorial cartoonist for The Sunday Times and illustrator for The New Yorker, and Steadman is renowned for his satirical political cartoons and social caricatures, Hovey found it difficult to find his own voice in that space.
Despite not pursuing the same career path as his favourite illustrators, he has always favoured the same pen-and-ink, analogue approach and has continued to work like this in different mediums.
By the time Hovey left university, it was the early days of social media, with Facebook and MySpace in full swing. Through the latter, he was invited to participate in group exhibitions and became involved with a collective called Daydream, which organised shows in London in the late 00s—the golden age of street art.
Hovey recalls: “I was living in Bristol at the time and would go down to London and mix with other illustrators and street artists.
“I was doing what I thought an arty person does and got paid nothing for almost all of it. Jobs would come in, and I’d do the odd thing for a few hundred quid, but there was no living being made out of it at this point.”
When he had time after working temp jobs, Hovey created art in M&C Saatchi in Soho’s Golden Square and painted and drew on the walls of empty shops in Carnaby Street.