The Case To Be More Childish - Featuring Pat Thomas

Hey friends 👋 ,

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m pretty childish. But as you grow older, there’s a societal push to ‘take things seriously’, to get the safe job, the mortgage, to ‘settle down’. For someone who doesn’t spend more than a month or two in a single place, works at an early-stage startup, and started illustrating out of pure obsession, I’d say I’m quite far from it. While I assume these family expectations come from a good place, I want to suggest a very different outlook. Be more childish. To me, being childish means being more creative, more playful, taking more risks, being more spontaneous, and breaking more rules.

Why? I truly believe that being childish led me to meet some of my closest friends, to start illustrating myself, and to explore new perspectives, whether that be in startups, culture, or art. Using Sahil Bloom’s analogy of luck, I have a deep conviction that being childish increases your ‘luck surface area’.

In fact, being childish and following my curiosities got me to reach out to today’s guest, the incredibly talented, Pat Thomas. Originally from Cornwall, Pat is a London-based illustrator specialising in the hand-drawn. Pat's personal work explores aspects of history and folklore, and playfully intertwines aspects of fact and fiction.

I initially discovered Pat’s work through Berlioz, the house-jazz artist making waves on the internet with the slogan “If Matisse made house music”. The EP cover really caught my eye and I went down the rabbit hole of Pat’s work.

From a distance, the saturated swirls of colour match the smooth rhythms of Berlioz. The separation of the lines also match the strong underlying house rhythm. On closer inspection, you notice how the swirls merge into interesting elements - a man with a saxophone, a cloud, high heels, faces. I really got lost in the work of Pat. The animation of the album cover is the icing on the cake (check it out on Spotify).

I’d love to know a little bit more about your collaboration with Berlioz! Is there a story behind how you connected? How did you decide on the specific style?

Pat’s editorial and commercial briefs also display this same value of storytelling. Whilst most finished illustrations are digitally coloured, all of Pat's projects begin on paper and often employ a dynamic range of media.

If you had the power to bring one of the characters in your illustrations to life, which would it be and why?

Do you have a vivid memory of when some part of your process changed for the better/or a change in the way you approached your illustration?

There’s something really freeing about the stories that Pat tells and the worlds he builds. He takes me back to a bright colourful child-like state where I’m not held to rigid rules. The fact that I can weave in between the characters he creates, feel their emotion, and temporarily be immersed into another world, really helps me to embrace my authentic self and be more childish.

If you’d like to explore Pat’s other work, I’d highly recommend you follow his journey on Instagram or check out his portfolio here!