Cosy up inside Jodie Howard’s soft and nostalgic scenes

Many of Jodie Howard’s paintings are inspired by late-night walks. The warm glowing windows that pour light out onto deserted streets became a focus for the artist when she moved to Cambridgeshire to study illustration, and she embraced city living for the first time. Among her cosy street-lit scenes however, are those that transport you to somewhere more green, snippets of summertime in places more distant — all indicative of the illustrator’s roots in the Peak District.

“Drawing for me is an escape from my busy mind and a connection to the physical world; a grounding experience,” Jodie tells It’s Nice That. “At the heart of my work is a desire to describe atmosphere and feeling, and colour is my main instrument for this.” Much like how the act of drawing itself is a form of escape for the artist, her paintings provide a space to slip into feelings and memories of our own in, quiet, nostalgic contemplation. It feels as thought there is just enough room to fit ourselves into her works.

This might be because the artist is always drawing from life. Staying true to in-person observations, her work is created “quite traditionally”, she says, “using a combination of gouache, coloured pencil and wax crayons, always rooted in observational drawing and sketchbook work.” In recent years Jodie has sought more and more opportunities to be a live illustrator for events and projects, quickly capturing evocative subjects and scenes with impressions she’s found only in fleeting moments.

Like many of us, growing up Jodie was immersed in the world of Studio Ghibli, which “romanticised a lot of environments for me”, she says. On other points of influence, Jodie also highlights folklore and its physical manifestations in the world that surrounds us, like stone circles. Clear to see in her work, the format of the landscape “will always be a major influence for me as somebody who was raised in the hills”, she concludes.