Karen Nichols

Karen Nichols has over 30 years experience of in archaeological illustration working within the commercial sector. As Studio Manager at Wessex Archaeology, she leads a large team of illustrators and creatives working across their regional offices. Karen is also responsible for maintaining the high quality of all Wessex Archaeology's visual outputs.

Originally trained as a traditional illustrator with hand drawing skills, Karen expanded her range of expertise working with a wide variety of computer software including AutoCAD, ArcGIS, Adobe CCS, Corel Creative Suite, Vue Infinite and Poser. Her reconstruction work ranges from hand drawing and digital painting to CGI visualisations. As well as illustrating and typesetting numerous publications, she has used her design skills for exhibitions, brochures, leaflets, displays, school packs and booklets.

Under Karen's leadership, the range of work undertaken by The Studio team has expanded to include more Heritage Interpretation Products, such as Video & Photography, Artefact Photogrammetry, Reconstruction & Visualisation, Animation, 3D modelling for Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Gaming, Design & Typesetting, Display & Exhibition, 3D scanning, 3D Printing, Web Content, APP Development and working with Content Management Systems (CMS).

As well as being the Studio Manager, she's the website administrator and an active member of their web and social media team, promoting the work of Wessex Archaeology through a variety of social media outlets.

Karen is motivated by her desire to develop new and innovative ways to visually present archaeological results to a wide range of audiences.

Outside of work, Karen combines her interest in macro photography with lepidopterology, travelling the world chasing butterflies.