Nathalie Jean-Bart has carved out a career for herself as an animator. But animation wasn’t enough and she started searching for other ways to express herself. So about 10 years ago, she started writing stories and illustrating them. But it still wasn’t enough and around 5 years ago, she started designing illustrations for t-shirts and making patterns.
cheerful madness – fried aubergines in summer
She’s big on florals, and she imbues them with something of that cartoon-character – slightly skewed, exaggerated, and fun. Colour is a playground, and for every design there are often several variations. Subdued hues with pops of neon-bright add another level of quirkiness.
cheerful madness – tender calico
cheerful madness – mellow folk rock
Nathalie of course admits to watching lots of cartoons as a kid, but also adds that she spent an awful lot of time drawing too – and when she wasn’t drawing, she was reading. Especially comics. All of this feeds into her designs, overlaid with her obvious love for animals and nature.
cheerful madness – igor and oleg dandelions calico
“An absolute highlight was having a children’s book and a comic book published, which was something I had always wanted to do, alongside being an animator.”
cheerful madness – sayonara my dearest
Her best piece of advice? “Strangely enough the best piece of advice I was ever given was by a musician. He told me not to worry about how a piece of music or art will turn out; not to worry about what other people think. Just do it and enjoy it .”
You can find more of Nathalie’s work in her Spoonflower shop, cheerfulmadness_cartoons.