Richard Allen

This talented digital illustrator recently won his second V&A award in three years, while also building a prize-winning oil painting career. STEVE PILL learns how he does it

- Steve Pill

Despite what the title of our esteemed magazine might suggest, it is increasingly rare to find someone who can seriously claim to be enjoying award-winning success as both an artist and an illustrator. Richard Allen is operating in a rather rarefied sphere then.

Not only was this accomplished oil painter named the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2016 after successfully completing a number of plein air challenges in the popular TV series, but his commercial illustration work also saw him scoop two major prizes in the last three years at the annual V&A Illustration Awards. Richard was named the overall V&A Illustrator of the Year in 2017 for a clever commission for The Sunday Telegraph’s “Money” section that restyled President Donald Trump’s blonde thatch as Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which he followed up by winning the Illustrated Journalism category in May of this year for Experts, an image made to accompany another Sunday Telegraph article titled “My lawyer was so bad I did the work myself”.

While these twin successes are impressive enough, they have been achieved via two markedly different approaches, ones which vary not only in terms of medium, style, and technique but also in presentation and even name. The website for Richard Allen the oil painter reveals someone fascinated by the muddy realities and lush foliage of the natural world, eager to capture them in very fluid, gestural strokes, whereas the commercial illustration portfolio of A Richard Allen is filled with raking lines and rakish wit, revealing someone adept at conjuring amusing responses to rather a dry broadsheet copy. So which of these two competing strands represents the “real” Richard Allen? And how exactly has he honed and developed two very distinctive techniques?