I drew my brother-in-law John’s newsagents in the 1980s, stage directing his wife and one of his boys, along with Barbara (on the phone in the background) so that I could take a Polaroid for reference.
At the time, I had plenty of natural history and landscapes in my portfolio so I was making efforts to include more figures. I worked in A4 in pen and ink because photocopies were a useful way of posting out samples to publishers or advertising agencies.
No one commissioned me to draw a corner shop but I was kept busy illustrating a children’s book set in a Dales village, a couple of wildlife stories and a Dickens adaptation, so the effort I put in to my sample illustration paid off.
Like so many corner shops, this one closed and it’s now a private house, so I’m glad that I recorded the details of its interior.