Andrew Bylo is an artist and illustrator with 38 years’ experience in the worlds of Advertising, Design & Editorial: 2019 finds him working mostly for a major client in Japan via Far East agent Cross World Connections based in Tokyo. He will shortly be starting on the 2020 collection.

Andrew’s core skill is working from life, swiftly and accurately in media from pencil/pencil crayon to gouache or acrylic. Stylistically, his work ranges from economical line drawing to full atmospheric colour. Spontaneity is the hallmark of his work.

During a rich & varied professional career, he’s had afternoon tea with Ian Dury at The Waldorf Astoria as part of a book project for Faber & Faber on emerging creatives, and been sent to Patrick Moore’s house to draw his portrait from life on behalf of Mitchell Beazley, only to be told by the celebrated astronomer that the drawing was ‘a grotesque caricature’. The publishers had warned Andrew it might not go well…

Drawing and painting people from life is his real love, and he was appointed in October 2017 as ‘portrait-painter-in-residence’ for London-based agency ‘krow’ and has painted all 54 of krow’s team. Malcolm White, chief strategy officer and founder of krow, said: “Andrew Bylo’s genius is in working quickly to seize a recognisable impression of an individual. We commissioned him to celebrate the role our people play in the success of the agency, and to make our office walls far more personal.”

Andrew Bylo is an avid keeper of sketchbooks, dating back to the 1970s, about 130 or so at the last count, and in his spare time, curiously enough, he rather likes to draw and paint.