About Me

Hi There, I'm Mel. Nice to Meet You!
Hi there! I’m Mel Langton and I’m a Lincoln based freelance designer and illustrator who loves to create unique and vibrant artwork.
I love to bring exciting ideas to life and regularly produce commissioned artwork for both business and private customers.
Whether it’s colourful and engaging artwork to showcase a business, eye-catching and inclusive design to represent a community or uplifting and inspirational artwork to celebrate your family or loved ones. My passion is creating eye-catching original designs that connect with people to empower and inspire.
My portfolio includes colour-popping custom illustrations, bespoke portraits, surface pattern design, art prints, cards, homewares and clothing.
How I Create My Artwork
I enjoy creating artwork using both traditional and digital hand-drawn techniques. For my commissioned work I favour drawing using Procreate, which allows me to create colour-popping designs, but with the ease of editing. I also love to work more traditionally, using acrylic inks, watercolour, brush-markers and metallic inks.
That being said, I could never choose between working fully traditionally or digitally. You can’t beat the feel of paper, the smell of ink and getting your hands messy!
This also leads me on neatly to the fact that I’m hugely against AI created artwork. There are currently many ongoing arguments around its use. Having discovered, however, that my own artwork has been scraped to train AI, I can confirm I’m not a supporter.
How Did My Journey Start?
This is a question I’m often asked, so a little more detail is shared here.
I know it sounds clichéd, but I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. At 5yrs old I was obsessed with drawing He-Man and can still draw him from memory, complete with rippling muscles and furry boots. I also spent hours making up characters and drawing little cartoon strips and comics.
As a teenager I was a dedicated Britpop fan, although I’m of the camp who call it ‘Indie’. I spent hours poring over album artwork and enjoyed images inspired by the music being listened to.
Later, a fascination was developed with the graphic aesthetics, symbolism, and storytelling found within Pop Art, Art Nouveau, and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
Making Choices
Although I loved drawing and painting, I also had keen interests in animation, jewellery making and textile art. To help me choose a direction, I decided to study GNVQ Advanced Art & Design at college, in my hometown of Leicester.
In 1998 I moved to Lincoln to study a degree in Graphic design and Illustration, graduating in 2021 with a BA Hons in Illustration.
At that point, many of my friends and peers decided to either move back to their hometowns or to bigger cities. But I’d grown to love Lincoln and really wanted to stay, so decided to stay and build a creative career right here.

Art and Roller Skates
Over the years that followed came several artistic endeavours. From painting signs for pubs, to custom artwork for friends and even starting a Limited Company.
Well For Instance Ltd was the brainchild of myself and a close friend, creating caricatured greetings cards and wedding stationery.
After 6 years of running the business in our spare time, we made the tough decision to end Well For Instance. We had both been gaining more personal commissions, alongside the business AND our day jobs. Also, I’d started playing the full contact sport of roller derby, which had ignited a new passion that I wasn’t going to give up.
We decided we both needed to be honest about what we really wanted.
Two months later I hosted my first solo art exhibition, and this cemented my ambition to become a solo artist.
Behind Mel Langton Art
Little did I know it at the time, but roller derby would be a huge turning point for my artwork. The sport introduced me to a whole new world and subculture, where strong, powerful, inspirational women were flipping conformity on its head and becoming their own heroes.
At last, I understood the kind of artwork I wanted to make.
From that point on I continued to build my portfolio, whilst creating artwork for my team, The Lincolnshire Bombers. I gained more and more art commissions, and exhibited my artwork at more art shows, events and markets. Then one day I was tagged in an artist call out for Lincoln’s first Wild In Art sculpture trail, The Lincoln Barons’ Charter Trail.

Seeking Exciting Opportunities
Although I didn’t know it at the time, this would pave the way for a number of art projects throughout Lincolnshire. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to produce colourful designs for the Lincoln Knights’ Trail and Lincoln IMP Trail. I was also commissioned to illustrate the ‘Kipper the Tortoise’ design for the RAF 100 Voices Trail.
In 2022 I was awarded funding by Lincoln Creates to bring my ‘Piecing Us Together’ idea to life. This project allowed me to collaborate with 40 local businesses to create their own bespoke puzzle pieces. These individually hand painted pieces finally came together to create one giant colourful and inclusive city scene.
My last art trail was the St Barnabas Hospice HeArt Trail, in 2023. This was extra special as I was appointed their art trail Artist Ambassador, along with designing and painted 4 HeArts.
I’ve also been commissioned to create public art for EMR and North Notts and Lincs Community Rail Partnership. For these projects I ran workshops with various community groups, schools and youth groups to create collaborative pieces for display.
These artworks can now be found on permanent display at railway stations across the East Midlands, including Lincoln, Derby and Nottingham.
Celebrating Equality and Diversity
I love to work with people from all different backgrounds, celebrating diversity and helping others to shine their lights brightly.
It’s a real privilege to be granted a peek in to someone’s world, in order to create something very personal for them.
When someone commissions me to create a special bespoke piece of art, it’s a truly collaborative process. I take great joy from connecting with my customers to hear their stories and discover their passions. This allows me to produce work that reflects their unique personalities, becoming something they can truly treasure.
If you’d love to work with me, I’d love to hear from you!

Where You Can Find Me
As well as creating commissioned work I regularly exhibit my own original artwork at art exhibitions and artist markets.
I also sell my work online through Etsy and Teemill.
Don’t forget. If you’d like to find out more about commissioning a special art piece for yourself or someone special, then please feel free to Contact Me.
You can also keep up to date with my projects by following me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
If you’d like to see examples of my original artwork, bespoke portraits and public art designs please visit my Portfolio.