From loving our pets, to the urge to take selfies, we all have our quirks that help shape our personality. Artist Georgia Naughton has uncovered such quirks from a handful of Geelong locals and put pen to paper to create small portraits to showcase them.
“The whole way it started was because I usually draw angels but I thought I really don’t feel like doing that today,” Georgia says of her new style.
One thing lead to another, and she scrawled a self-portrait of herself and her house mate to find she was hooked on the new concept. The idea of creating an exhibition and deck of cards from the illustrations came about, and with a goal in mind, Georgia created 64 portraits – 44 of which were done in the span of a month.
The exhibition was held at House Iberia – where her house mate works – and shown to an excited crowd, resulting in more portraits for the young artist to create.
Flicking through the ‘Pleb Society’ cards and, for many Geelong residents, there’ll be quite a few familiar faces. One in particular is Trent Stephens, who belongs to party-throwing, fashion-goers group the Veeped Bored Co. Coincidentally, working with Veeped was one of Georgia’s first real gigs as a graphic designer – which she studied at RMIT.
“I’ve been doing their posters for years,” Georgia admits, mentally counting back to the very first one.
“Whenever they have a major event on at Barwon Club, I’d draw pictures of them for the posters. Now thinking about it they were probably my first ever plebs as they were on the posters. Trent would often give me the most insane briefs.”
While Georgia was actively drawing for the Veeped Bored Co crew during her early days of being a graphic designer, much of what she was created didn’t ignite her creativity.
The role wasn’t what she thought, and wanting to change up her career aspects, a street artist and friend Troy Thompson came to her with the proposal of doing an exhibition together.
“That kind of ignited me and the feedback was great as well,” Georgia says of the exhibition.
“I had teachers come to it and say they had no idea I could draw and asked why I hadn’t done it when I was studying.”
Truth be told, Georgia can’t answer just why it was she kept her love and ability of drawing separate from her study of graphic design.
As it stands now, Georgia is still creating, though is taking some much needed R&R for her hand after drawing all those portraits, though she’s still drawing the odd portrait here and there for those who request them.
With her Pleb Society project completed, she has dreams to evolve her style again, and perhaps to even work on a children’s book – however, that’s just a pipedream for now.
Georgia’s biggest goal is to keep her passion alive for the craft and maintain the same spark and inspiration she had as a kid when she first started to draw.
“I’ve just been drawing on the side now and I love it,” she says.
“There is too much of a good thing and I don’t want to ruin it.”
You can pick up a deck of the Pleb Society cards and other work from her website.
Written by Amanda Sherring