86
MOUNTAINLIFE
WINTER /SPRING2016
Locally, her work hangs in a coffee shop while she spends her days teaching people
how to snowboard, but on a global scale, illustrator Sarah Kingmight beWhistler’s
most wide-reaching artist. Her fine-line illustrations and dense typography pieces
have netted King a client list that includes The New York Times, OprahMagazine,
The Guardian, Vice, BBC History, Gnu Snowboards and the San
FranciscoMuseum of ModernArt.
“I get a lot of work through word of mouth,”
admits the 30-year-old, who confesses to
having had to draw no fewer than five
portraits of President Obama in recent
years. “When you do stuff for a mag
like Oprah, something that massive in
America, it brings a lot of exposure,”
Sarah says, adding that one highlight
so far was working with National
Geographic. “That was kind of a dream
come true. It was just one illustration,
but when you get a job like that it’s like,
whoa, is this a real email?”
Growing up in England, art was a part of Sarah’s
life from the beginning. “I always drew as a kid, my
dad was a writer andmy momwas an architect. I used to
write and illustrate my own little books and hand bind them, then sell them for a
pound at the local grocery store. They were about aliens and stuff.”
From there, Sarah studied graphic design at the University of Brighton. “We did a lot
of old school printing techniques and learned how they used to lay out typography
back in the day,” Sarah says. “Letter press, screen printing. It was unreal. I think school
gives you structure and forces you to do a ton of work youmight not do otherwise.”
SARAHKING
ARTIST
