Food illustrator Tom Hovey talks Bake Off, Bristol and building a creative community

It's impossible to visit the homepage of Welsh illustrator Tom Hovey's website without working up an appetite. From mouth-watering burgers to boozy ice creams, he's drawn up a dream menu of delicious foods throughout his career.

Even if you don't know Hovey by name, you'll have seen his infamous illustrations on TV every year during the Great British Bake Off. He's illustrated the showstoppers and signatures since the very first season of the show aired back in 2010, but his subject matter wasn't always of the foodie variety.

Hovey remembers how drawing was just one of those things he could always focus on when he was young, a quality that he recognises now in his own children. He was never really interested in anything else and was set on doing "an art thing".

Since his parents weren't necessarily what you'd call "arty people", his perception of art was limited to big, grand formats. The term illustration didn't even cross his path until sixth form college, where he studied art and design and discovered some books on British illustrator Ralph Steadman and professional cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.

Even with some newfound inspiration, Hovey was still unsure where his passion for drawing could take him.

Despite having little interest in comics, he opted to do an HND in Sequential Illustration before going on to study Illustration at Bournemouth University. "The HND gave me a work ethic and base knowledge of storyboarding, which I've used in a few jobs," says Hovey.

His early reading of Steadman and Scarfe inspired him to create political illustrations throughout university. While Scarfe is known for his work as an editorial cartoonist for The Sunday Times and illustrator for The New Yorker, and Steadman is renowned for his satirical political cartoons and social caricatures, Hovey found it difficult to find his own voice in that space.

Despite not pursuing the same career path as his favourite illustrators, he has always favoured the same pen-and-ink, analogue approach and has continued to work like this in different mediums.

By the time Hovey left university, it was the early days of social media, with Facebook and MySpace in full swing. Through the latter, he was invited to participate in group exhibitions and became involved with a collective called Daydream, which organised shows in London in the late 00s—the golden age of street art.

Hovey recalls: "I was living in Bristol at the time and would go down to London and mix with other illustrators and street artists.

"I was doing what I thought an arty person does and got paid nothing for almost all of it. Jobs would come in, and I'd do the odd thing for a few hundred quid, but there was no living being made out of it at this point."

When he had time after working temp jobs, Hovey created art in M&C Saatchi in Soho's Golden Square and painted and drew on the walls of empty shops in Carnaby Street.

Because he worked in such an analogue way, Hovey says he had "no real brain for graphic design" and never wanted to work at a brand. He also admits that he had an idealistic point of view in his early 20s and never really had a plan.

He adds: "There were people I know that did have that drive, but I always just wanted to do the work and meet people through that.

"Going down and doing those shows with Daydream and being amongst people was great."

Though he never wanted the permanence of a full-time job, there was the issue of getting very little pay, and his plan was always to go freelance when it became a viable career option. "I thought if I can't make a go of it full time by 30, I'll look at something else," he admits, but, as it happens, there was an opportunity right around the corner.

A friend with whom Hovey lived in Bristol after university ended up working in television and managed to get him in the door for the very first season of The Great British Bake Off. Although the money wasn't life-changing, to begin with, Hovey says, "It felt like something, like a way out of doing other things that I didn't want to be doing."

For the first few series, he worked full-time and drew Bake Off illustrations on evenings and weekends, but now it runs like "a pretty well-oiled system" with the help of interns who he often hires as freelancers after their training.

If—like me—you're a fan of the show, you'll be wondering how it all works to get the moreish illustrations that we've seen on our screens for the past few months. Hovey reveals that people on set take photos of the finished bakes while they're cleaning up the tent for judging, making sure to get lots of angles and close-ups.

Then, Hovey receives labelled versions of the photos and even gets briefed on the main ingredients to help inform the illustration. Now, I know what you're thinking: we've all seen the odd cake flop, so how does Hovey draw the finished product if it doesn't quite go to plan?

Luckily, the bakers also send him photos of their practice runs, so he has something to go off even if there are soggy bottoms or, as Paul Hollywood says, "concertinaed cake".

Despite enjoying his years of illustrating for the baking competition, Hovey didn't want it to define him. He regularly revisits questions of his identity as an illustrator outside of Bake Off and believes that "as long as you're not completely lost to one thing, it can work".

Though he couldn't accept cake commissions under his contract with the show, other food illustration projects came in as a result when the Bake Off was picked up on BBC and then Channel 4.

In the 'off-season' in 2015, Hovey tried to focus on more general food illustration. He says: "I'm a foodie, I love food, and Bristol has an amazing food scene - I knew a lot of people in it, so it was an easy step.

"I've enjoyed not thinking about what else I should be doing because it's a different discipline when I'm working on these projects."

There has also been scope to evolve the Bake Off illustration style, which has become more refined as the show has gone on.

Creating a poster for Bristol rock band Idles, addressing topics like toxic masculinity, was one of Hovey's favourite projects to work on. "It was really nice to do a poster for them in a completely different way," he says, adding that the illustration has just been reproduced and released as a screen print.

Other career highlights include a quick-turnaround editorial commission for Bloomberg Business Week, which involved illustrating a series of boozy ice creams for a recipe article.

"The fortunate thing about doing Bake Off for so long is that it has a really big reach, and I get really great clients coming to me with interesting projects," says Hovey.

He also enjoyed self-initiated projects and series, which he plans to do more of in the future.

In the show's off-season period this year, Hovey wants to venture into different realms and experiment more. "My work is in a niche sector, so, from my point of view, I just want to plan for a future as a working artist that can be sustained by my own output," he explains.

He hints that this could involve producing prints and original artworks, essentially building a body of work that people are interested in and want to buy. Being out of the city and living in suburbia, Hovey also feels a bit of a disconnect from his community, so he wants to find a way to connect more with people who follow his work and with other artists through something like Patreon.

"In the last couple of years, the movement of social media has changed. I want a community without being addicted to the screen," he adds.