mmu degree show

Some gorgeous work that really caught my eye!

 Illustration.

Becca Hall

Charlotte Cotterill

Steph Coathupe

Jessica Ip

Kristapps Butlers

Fine art.

Alison White

Phoebe Mills

David Hickling

Fashion

Aimee Barrow

Aimee Barrow

Aimee Barrow

Textiles.

Clare Florey Hitchcox

Clare Florey Hitchcox

Clare Florey Hitchcox

Also some super images at Stockport College Illustration Travelling Show last week at NQ2022 in Manchester.

Celia Hume

Catherine McConnell

Emma Johnson

Some of my favourite picturebooks 2013/4

I had a good browse in the bookshop a couple of weeks ago and here's a pick of my recently-released favorites.

 There's a Shark in the Bath by Sarah McIntyre (2014 Scholastic)

Dulcie finds sharks in the bath, but her parents don't believe her. She plays with them to distract them from eating her. When Dad comes to check what she's up to in the bathroom, she sends them back to sea. When she sits down to eat breakfast, she hears a rustle in her cereal bowl. There's a small elephant with a speech bubble "are you going to eat me?"

Great fun plot, plenty of humour and colourful comic-style illustrations.

Big Bad Owl by Steve Smallman & Richard Watson (illus) (Little Tiger Book 2014)

Scowl (wonderful name!), the grumpy owl (sits on the labelled grumpy branch with black cloud scribbled above). The other animals try to cheer him up but he's rude to them. Scowl annoyed to find Little Bird is sitting on his grumpy branch. Little Bird tells him to flap off, because Scowl has broken his happy hat. Scowl has been out-grumped for the first time in his life! He's sorry he's broken the hat and admits he likes being grump, too.

A lively fun story.

And from 2013:-

You're a Rude Pig, Bertie by Claudia Boldt (Jonathan Cape 2013)

Bertie insults everyone except Ruby, and he throws a party to impress her. Nobody comes, because his invites are so insulting, but it resolves ok in the end. 

A fun story with lovely b & w lines, pastel colours and offset print effect in places.

The Crocodile who didn't like water by Gemma Merino (MacMillan Children's Books 2013)

Winner of Macmillan competition 2011

The crocodile was afraid of water ... and couldn't fit in with other crocodiles. Then it breathed fire! It wasn't a crocodile after all, it was a dragon.

Gorgeous fuzzy line work like drawing on carbon-copy paper/mono-prints, and print-effect colour, too. Very simple cute croc/dragon and delightfully simple story.

Time for Bed Fred by Yasmen Ismeen (Bloomsbury Bks 2013)

Exuberant inky illustrations, dog remains in monotone, great use of grey.

The Slightly Annoying Elephant  by David Walliams & Tony Ross (Harper Collins 2013)

David Walliam's first picture book

An elephant arrives to stay, saying he's been adopted..and then all his friends come, too. A cautionary tale about the need to read the small print when you adopt an animal at a zoo. Wonderful stuff!

Aunt Amelia by Rebecca Cobb (2013 Macmillan Children's Books)

When Mum & Dad go away for the night, Aunt Amelia (a crocodile) arrives to look after a very cross little boy & girl. But they soon change their minds about Aunt Amelia when she she puts her own alternative spin on the list of sensible instructions Mum and Dad have left behind.

Simple text with lots of hidden details in pictures (birds nesting in Amelia's extravagant hat)

Rebecca Cobb says she uses a lightbox to trace through her rough pencil sketches using a sharp stick dipped in ink - the line feels close to drawing with a pencil. She colours in using watercolour, inks & coloured pencils "because these all make different marks and I can choose whether something needs to be coloured in a way that is sot, scratchy, neat or messy" (Booktrust interview 2013).

Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown (2013 Little Brown Books for Young Readers)

Mr. Tiger is bored with being proper and he decides to go wild...

All the animals, including elephants, rhinos, cows, and monkeys, dress in Victorian clothes, walk upright on two legs and look very prim and proper. Mr Tiger rebels, roars, takes off his clothes and goes into the nearby wilderness. But he gets lonely... 

The striking 1950s retro-style pictures really caught my eye, in muted limited-palette colours, except for the oranges to Mr Tiger. Bold shapes with interesting patterns and rich textures. The compositions are interesting, too, especially the page where the tiger starts to slip down off the page as he goes on all fours. The illustrations are made using india ink, watercolour, gouache and pencil and digitally collaged.. The style reminds me of illustrations by the Canadian illustrator, Jon Klassen, in I Want My Hat Back. 

Peter Brown describes his process on his blog. "... I made tons of little watercolor and ink shapes (as well as a few pencil drawings and handmade textures), and scanned them into Photoshop where I colored and layered and combined them into the finished illustrations. It took a while to figure out my new technique, but I’m pretty happy with the finished result." 

A fun story and great illustrations. 

Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles (2012)

This book has enhanced my understanding of picturebooks so much, I thought I would share it with you on my blog. It is a stunning visual treat as well as a clear and concise analysis of picturebooks, written by Martin Salisbury, a Professor of Illustration and Morag Styles, a Professor of Children’s literature. The seven chapters cover the history, practice, theory  and publishing of picturebooks, intermixed with in-depth case studies. It's also reader-friendly and has an international outlook.

The chapter investigating the picturebook maker's art is particularly eye-opening. It highlights the importance of learning to see (visual literacy) and thinking through drawing, leading to the development of a personal language. Several case studies explore this process further, showing how sketching and drawing (sometimes digital) have led to personal narratives and picturebooks. Beatrice Alemagna's  Un Lion A Paris (Autrement Jeunesse, 2006) probably forms the longest professional case study in the book. Her images also grace the front and back covers.  Although her work is popular in Europe and East Asia, it is only just beginning to break through into the English market. The authors speculate whether this is because "Britain's longer tradition of illustration for children, with its roots in representational painting, has lead to narrower perceptions of graphic 'suitability' in picturebooks". Food for thought.

How do children interact with picturebooks? How does the child make sense of the 'readerly gap' created by the space and tension between what the words say and what the pictures show? The authors present some interesting results of a research project by Evelyn Avizpe and Morag Styles, which looked at the detailed reactions of children to a range of picturebooks. They found that although children love to be amused, they also like to be challenged, and picturebooks are vital in the early development of visual literacy.

The interplay of words and images is what makes a picturebook work. The images can fill in the gaps, reflect and expand on what is written and ideally leave room for the reader's own interpretations. Words and pictures can tell different stories and contradict each other in some way, such as in the celebrated example of Rosie's Walk (Pat Hutchins) where the unflustered hen is being pursued by an accident-prone fox not mentioned in the text.  Vladimir Radunsky and Chris Raschuka's Hip Hop Dog (Harper Collins NY 2010) interweaves the rhythms of the rap with the images so the images become the rap. Marts Altes's No! (published 2011) exploits the gap in understanding between a dog and it's owner in a fun way.

What is suitable for young children? Should they be protected from all things unpleasant and dangerous, including dark traditional fairytales? Chapter five looks at the way some taboo subjects, such as domestic violence, sex, war and death, have been approached in picturebooks. Norway actually subsidises some indigenous picturebooks to enable publication. Angry Man and Mum's Hair (by Svein Nyhus and Gro Dahle 2003 and 2007, Cappelen) from Norway, look at domestic violence and depression, and were produced in response to requests by therapists for conversation-piece picturebooks.  In Britain, we have The Sad Book (Micheal Rosen and Quentin Blake, Walker Books 2004) and David Mckee's The Conquerors (Anderson Press 2004) and Tusk Tusk (Anderson Press 1978). What is particularly interesting is that many smaller nations, such as Norway, value the indigenous picturebook as part of their particular cultural and artistic heritage, and provide subsidies for such books. No mention of Britain here, though.

The printing processes available at the time have traditionally dictated the artist's medium, but now any medium can be used. So why the revival in the use of printmaking processes for illustrators? Placing a technical process between the artist and the paper can produce happy accidents and lead to less self-conscious mark-making. Chapter six investigates the traditional methods of printing the way different picturebook makers use and adapt these methods today.

The book finishes on the children's publishing industry, with information about publishers, agents,  contracts and the editorial process.  Perhaps I should just mention that this book doesn't try to cover the technical issues of storyboarding  and how the page format works in detail. This information can be found in  Illustrating Books (Martin Salisbury 2004 Barrons Educational Series) and Writing With Pictures (Uri Shulevitz 1985 Watson-Guptill Publications NY). 

A really excellent and thought-provoking reference book, beautifully laid-out with illustrations at almost every turn of the page, full of inspiration, practical information and fascinating insights. 

Minicomic workshop with Jim Medway

I was tempted along to this workshop at the Cornerhouse by the words 'clarity' and 'simplicity'. Also a curiosity to fathom-out comics, which I've boxed off as being boy's-only stuff, full of action-packed aliens, spidermen and naughty boys sporting stripey jumpers. 

I had a great time. Jim Medway was engaging fun, and the whole group, of twenty or so, got involved. He whizzed us through the world of comics and brought to my attention a whole load of new names and styles, including Charles Addams (great compositions and characters), Marjane Satrapi and Frans Masereel (amazing woodcuts). 

Jim's own very distinctive comic characters are anthropomorphic teenage cats, full of attitude and swagger. He is currently working on a 48 page character-based comic about 3 lads walking around Manchester, called 'Playing Out'    (to be publ. 2013 by Black Slate Books). (photos taken from slide show, sorry about poor quality)

We did lots of hands-on exercises, including drawing quick cartoon self-portraits and 'who dunnit' game, where we matched the image to the person. We also drew animals in 10 seconds with our eyes shut, and most were surprisingly recognisable. Giving animals different occupations was another exercise. We were each dealt a random animal and random occupation, and we had about a minute to draw this clearly enough for others to guess what they were. Mine was a clown crab.

 Again, we managed to guess what most of the drawings represented. Time limits seem to condense the images to essentials. Jim admitted that stereotypes and cliches help, too! We later had 3 random cards dealt, with a setting added. Mine was 'pirate elephant underwater'. Emotions could be added, too, as a 4th card. What a great way to develop characters!

We progressed to 3-act collaborative cartoon strips, where we each filled in the first box of a comic, then passed it on, then filled in the second box of someone else's comic, then passed it on again, and finished a different person's story by filling in a third box. It reminded me of the Consequences game, where a collaboration leads to something unexpected.. Here's a scan of one of the sequences. 

The final collaborative comic in this workshop involved the entire group and one story. We agreed on a crocodile dinner-lady character from an earlier exercise, called Sunshine, and a contrasting round schoolboy character called Alphonse. The genre was gameshow/documentary. We had a random page number each, and developed the story page-by page, person by person. A bizzare story evolved, with a body-parts gameshow, a missing leg,a hybrid body-parts being, a heart-to-heart and a happy ending. It was printed off in time for us to each take a copy home, too - our very own jam comic!

The Genius of Dahl

What a fascinating look at Roald Dahl it was last week. David Walliams had me hooked on his every observation, delivered with twinkly eyes. 

Dahl was an outsider, a Norwegian child living in Cardiff. His father died when he was 3.

He never lost his anarchistic spirit. he hated school and always kicked against the rules.

He had a fascination with extreme characters. His dealings with Mrs Prachett, the horrible sweet shop woman he played the dead mouse prank on, never left him.

Exaggerated characters can make the story less frightening. Quentin Blake also said this about caricatures.

Dahl was always wickedly funny ("...without the humour, it's child abuse...")

His work is believable, although not realistic.

He really relished things like worms and burps. His inner child never left him.

He never described horrors, he just says that they happened. 

"...and then it gets worse." He liked putting his characters in a stew.

In Dahl's world, a granny can be poisoned by a grandson, parents can be eaten by a rhino, and somehow this is acceptable. True genius?

Inspiration

I came across this piece of cloth hanging up at the Whitworth Art Gallery recently, which bowled me over. It's a length of stencilled 'adire eleko', mid c19th, made using starch resist and indigo-dyed cotton. It's from Nigeria, possibly a copy of a design first produced in Manchester for the African export market by Hendersons. 

And another piece of inspiration from the Whitworth's Global Threads exhibition by Aboubakar Fofana, called Les Arbres a Bleus (2007, metal, pvc, sand and indigo-dyed cotton).

This explores the tree as a traditional sacred symbol in Mali and the long history of dyeing and patterning cotton with indigo. 

http://cottonglobalthreads.com/case-study/aboubakar-fofana/

Blk Art Group exhibition

On a recent visit to Sheffield, I called into The Graves Gallery to find a fascinating exhibition up from the Blk Group, featuring the work of Donald Rodney, Keith Piper, Claudette Johnson and Marlene Smith. 

This radical group of young black artists came together in the 1980s to make ‘defiant and thought-provoking’ work . Donald Rodney (1961-98) suffered from sickle cell anemia, and used x-rays to make up his images and examine the social/political ills of British society. Below is his image from The Britannia Hospital Series (1988). Keith Piper’s powerful Black Assassin Saints (1984) challenged Britain’s business links with South Africa at the time of apartheid. Claudette Johnson painted strong dignified women in images such as And I have My Own Business (1982). 

The image that stays with me, though, is Do. Please. A Happy Ending 1987, by Marlene Smith. It is based on a family wedding photo and made up of papers, ink, gouache and pencil in black and white, where the women are especially highlighted with more white. It has a very fragile and yet fairytale quality to it that is very haunting.

Well worth a visit.

http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/museums/graves-gallery/exhibitions/current/the-blk-art-group

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=50013

Anne Wilson - Gold prize-winner Serco London Transport

Wow! This is so eye-catching! I have a storybook that Anne Wilson illustrated that has inspired me over the years, called 'Growing Good' - with wonderful colours, textures and perspectives.

Here is something from her website:-

Anne has practiced illustration for over 15 years and has completed an MA with a distinction in illustration at Central St Martins College of Art, London.

She enjoys investigating narrative, communicating ideas and themes through colourful collages and layers of pattern and texture. 

She constructs her images in layers, rolling out backgrounds with printing inks, onto which she combines more layers of stencils, intricately cut and mono printed papers, acrylic washes, painted details and drawing. Some of her images are refined further in Photoshop.

http://www.illustrationweb.com/artists/AnneWilson/gallery/55

Jillian Tamaki - embroidered book covers

These are so gorgeous - taken from Jillian's website:-

Penguin THREADS Classics
Client: Penguin USA

These three book covers were embroidered by hand over the course of 2 months. Three books were a lot to pull off, but I am such a sucker for classic literature and book illustration... how could I say no? The covers will be sculptural-embossed and are full wraparound images with french flaps (click the small picture to enlarge). They will be available for sale in October, 2011.

http://www.jilliantamaki.com/embroidery/penguin-thread

s/ 

Andy Perez

Some gorgeous collages.http://andytheillustrator.com/blog
This one is Grow Your Own Food.

Comparison between 2 practitioners

I have chosen to compare and contrast Chris Corr and Otto Dettmer as practitioners. I visited Chris in London and listened to Otto's talk last month. They are very different in their processes and practices; they operate in different markets, with few overlaps. What can I learn from this that I can apply to my work?

 

Chris Corr is an fine artist as well as an illustrator. He trained at the Royal College of Art and won a drawing prize to study in America. This perhaps enabled him to get started on his path as an illustrator in the travel market. He has managed to translate his talent for observational drawing and painting into successful contemporary illustrations. He also taught drawing one day/week when he was establishing himself. His colouful gouache illustrations have a clear and unmistakeable style. They are warm and tactile with a folk art feel. He only uses the computer to scan his work in.

 

Apart from travel illustrations, Chris’s market includes editorials, children’s books, adult fiction and world map canvases. His clients are wide-ranging and include Qantas, Windstar Cruises, Royal Mail, Folio Society, Sherbet, BBC, Barefoot Books and Habitat. His agent, Illustration Web, gets him 1/3^rd of commissions. For promotion, he sends emails, contacts ADs and has exhibitions of original works. After a trip to India, he came back with a one-person show, ‘Wel-come to India’, which was followed by a book and a short BBCTV film. Royal Mail sent him to Bosnia to paint the peace-keeping troops. Although Chris works on his own, he does team up sometimes with Brian Grimwood to do work for resturants and magazines.

 

Chris’s influences include folk art, primitive art, the Contructivists, Le Corbusier, Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson and Max Beckham. His passions appear to include travel, observation and painting.

 

Otto Dettmer, on the other hand, is a conceptual illustrator who largely specialises in editorials. He started off on a graphics course in Bristol, and followed this with an MA in screen-printing at Kingston. His commercial work is a mixture of photography, found images and flat shapes worked up together on the computer. He also makes screen-printed books for bookfairs. He is also fascinated by consumerism and consumer culture. His editorial work is conceptual, clever and pared-down with a simple message, but it is not always instantly-recognisable as Otto’s work.

 

Otto’s illustration market is mainly confined to editorial work, although he has done 2 big advertising jobs, which he didn’t enjoy. His editorial clients include the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Times Supplement, Economist and Time Out. His market does extend into Europe, with work for Le Monde and Freitag. He was unable to get an agent, which he thinks is because the editorial market is not very lucrative and his style is not always clear. He is very much a lone wolf who certainly doesn’t want to work with other illustrators. He is very persistent in his marketing approach, and used to travel to London once/week with 7 appointments/day, seeing ADs and agents. He doesn’t think his early work was very good and he often didn’t get further commissions from the client, but his persistence and practice has paid off. He regularly sends out promotional materials, often original and screen-printed. He finds that getting his work into daily national papers is also very good self-promotion. He also resells his work wherever possible, and advertises this on his website.

 

Otto’s influences include Polish poster designers, film (especially Hitchcock & Lang), Russian constructivists, Renaissance painters, neo-classical painters and sculptures, photography and found imagery. His passions appear to include screen-printing books and bookfairs.

 

Otto has had to embrace computer technology and compile an extensive library of images (over 1000) to enable him to meet tight editorial deadlines, where he may only have a few hours to prepare and send off the image. Chris has built up a lot of observational studies during his travels, which he is able to translate into his illustrations. Chris has a more traditional, fine-art approach than Otto, but also has more time to develop his illustrations as paintings, which he can supplement with exhibitions of original paintings. Otto, on the other hand, is in a less lucrative market and has to resell his editorial images.

 

What lessons can I learn from the way these 2 practitioners work? To make it in illustration you have to make striking images that communicate well, like both Chris and Otto do. I would need to work on this! I can do the observational studies, but have difficulty translating these into successful contemporary illustrations. You also have to be persistent, determined, professional, efficient, good at networking and lucky. I need to develop my networking and efficiency. I would personally prefer Chris’s broader market to Otto’s, because I think it is more interesting and varied. You can also spend more time away from the computer and not be faced with constant tight deadlines. I also prefer making and drawing to spending lots of time on the computer, but I find the computer is very useful for tweaking and adapting images. However, I think editorial work is a good way to get started, because there is so much of it (unfortunately, along with thousands of illustrators chasing it!). Also, I was hoping to do some b&w children’s illustrations for the educational market, which is apparently abundant (AOI Children’s seminar 2007), if you can draw children okay. I will also approach gardening and baby/children’s magazines. I do also occasionally exhibit my paintings and take commissions to sketch children’s portraits, and I could expand this some more with a more contemporary edge. I like the idea of having an agent who can not only bring you work, but also get your work in front of particular clients, such as Scholastic Educational Publishing. However, I need to have had some work published first and done a fair bit of promotion on my own. I also realise that finding the right agent can be difficult.

 

My passions include our environment, books and making images. I adore textures and materials and love working in ink, collage, clay and tissue paper. I also enjoy drawing from observation, especially people. I therefore also intend to target editorials with famous faces/climate change issues, and I aim to develop this in the final stages of my major project.