Just as with our tournaments, the Aim Games Themed Art Contests have seen a long streak of increasing participation, high quality artwork and a variety of winners. Of all the placing contestants, Fiona Barden is one the most prolific and successful. Though she engaged in a career in design education for some time, she expresses her lifelong passion for illustration and how she ultimately got back into it, telling us “I’ve always loved drawing and wanted to be a children’s book illustrator, or an animator for Disney, when I was young. I studied graphic design with illustration & animation at university before wandering off course and starting a career within marketing design for the education sector. I still enjoyed drawing and thanks to social media, I started taking part in weekly online drawing challenges which reignited my dream of children’s illustration.”

A life-long artist, Fiona has seen the most serious progress in this vocation in the past decade, “I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve definitely been more focused in the past ten years. When I became a freelance designer, more and more of my commissions were becoming

illustration based. I’ve worked with a few children’s book publishers now and I’m slowly reaching my goal of being a children’s book illustrator!” Our art contests have seen exclusively Fiona’s non-digital work, but she knows and enjoys a variety of media, tools and utensils, “I usually work digitally these days with a mix of Photoshop, Illustrator and Pro-create, but for the Aim Games contests I mostly use black pen and ink. I like Faber-Castell’s Pitt Artist Pens, they give a really solid black. Their Soft Brush pen is really nice to work with and for smaller details I use a fineliner.” With her professional background and impressive design portfolio, Fiona was awarded contracts for two major design projects by our organization.  

As an Aim Games art contestant and tournament participant, Fiona has great appreciation for both, saying “my partner Stu ’Steg’ Lindsey always encourages me to have a go. Throwing does not come naturally to me though so I was thrilled to squeeze into the cash prize range for K20: Forest Nightmare last year. I’ve found the games very compelling once I get into it and I love trying to improve my score.”

Having earned multiple winning placements in our art contests across a large variety of categories over the past four years alone, Fiona is among the most experienced participants. Reflecting on her time as an Aim Games art contestant, she tells us “I like the themes the most. They are generally more intense and not what I would normally draw in my day to day work. The themes put me out of my comfort zone and encourage me to try different things. For instance, I usually work with lots of bright colors but I prefer to challenge myself to create black and white artwork for the Aim Games Art Contests. Also, I like the challenge of not working digitally. There's no editing or undoing with pen and ink so I feel I focus a lot more!”

Aim Games Themed Art Contest Select Achievement Record

Contest #5

K16: The Quest - 3rd place

K17: The Wall - 2nd place

Contest #6

K18: Pirate Island - 1st place

H7: The Tunnel - 2nd place

Contest #7

K20: Forest Nightmare - 2nd place

H7X: Awful Amusement Park - 4th place

Contest #8

K22: Seven Seas - 2nd place

K23: Crystal Mine - 5th place

Holidays & Seasons - 1st place