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MFA student Holly Sterling has found success in the Over the Hills and Far Away Illustration Competition set up by Seven Stories – the National Centre for Children’s Books.
Her design for Hush-a-bye and Far Away was selected from over 30 entries from institutions across the UK for inclusion in a book of nursery rhymes, to sit alongside work by great illustrators including Michael Foreman, Shirley Hughes, Emma Chichester Clark, Shaun Tan… and many more. Her drawings will also go into the centre’s permanent collection.
A huge well done to the second year Illustrators who put on a great show at the Fruitmarket Gallery on Saturday! The event was a great success and the books presented created lots of interested amongst visitors to the event.
Students presented work made as part of their recent project ‘MapBook’ with book artist Jane Hyslop:
‘In order to be able to function in the world humans have found it essential to map their surroundings in order to impart information to others and to understand the world for themselves. However, it has not always only for practical reasons that maps have been made. People, from childhood, have a natural urge to make them and maps are fascinating to look at. They draw the viewer in and anyone who makes a map demonstrates some of their thought process through the way it is laid out and designed.
In this project second year Illustration students were asked to produce a piece of work in book form – this could be taken in as broad a sense as they wished. The book had to contain maps and or diagrams that explained a place. This place could be somewhere they knew intimately well, somewhere they were keen to explore and learn about through mapping it, or an imaginary place.’
For those who missed the event, there will be further opportunity to see the books which will be on display at Edinburgh College of Art Library, Evolution House, University of Edinburgh until the middle of May.
We were delighted to welcome Ben Cox and Brian Grimwood of The Central Illustration Agency to inspire students and staff last Friday at ECA.
(Our signed and illustrated copy of Brian’s book)
Ben began by introducing us to the agency and how it came to be, the vision that Brian had when he brought together a group of Illustrators in 1983. It was a really helpful introduction to what an agency should be and its relationship with both its clients and its designers as Ben walked us through some of their projects.
He described the vast array of projects they help bring about from shop windows such as Andrew Foster’s below, to book jackets and the transformation of spaces for a product launch. It was exciting to hear about the ways they bring their artists together – from collaboration to produce newspapers, to an Illustration Street party they held (definitely working out how to turn that one into a project…!)
Brian followed, who shared a vast range of examples from his professional experience, charting the developments and changes in his focus, and showing his enthusiasm for particular projects. This was intermingled with stories about working for Paul McCartney and later the Beatles, school days with David Bowie and the quirks of working as an Illustrator in Singapore.
(Brian inspired students to observe everything as he showed some of the portraits he is constantly drawing)
Much more information about the CIA and Brian’s career can be found interspersed with beautiful images in two recent publications:
The Central Illustration Agency – Licence to Inspire, Pirum Press 2010
Brian Grimwood – the man who changed the look of British Illustration, Black Dog Publishing 2012
All images above are taken from these publications.
Illustration for ‘An intimate history of Humanity’ by Theodore Zeldin
We were delighted that Illustrator Sara Oglivie came to visit last Friday. Sara is an old friend of the department and gave an entertaining an extremely useful talk on her practice as an illustrator, printmaker and book artist with plenty of hints for designers newly starting out.
She also brought along a host of examples of her work, showing the breadth of projects she has worked. A mob of students dug quickly into these samples and showered Sara in questions. My personal favourite was a certain Folio Society cover for the ‘Wizard of Oz’ – the kind of great illustration that puts butterflies in your tummy!
Cover design for ‘The Courage of Consort’ by Michel Faber
If, like me, you missed the opening of the Italian show last month, this is what it looked like:
These two fellows curated the comics exhibition, and also work part-time as heavily armed bodyguards for celebrity illustrators. They’re called Maurizio Scudiero and Davide Sandrini. Jonathan Gibbs glides effortlessly across the dancefloor.And of course the incredibly famous Roberto Innocenti.
Good, eh?
A small selection from the fantastic sample of Picture book illustration original artworks.
A school party came over from Glasgow to hear the stories illustrated brought to life in Italian by a visiting storyteller.
Jonathan Gibbs, our master and commander (and head of department) is this years Invited Artist at the Visual Arts Scotland exhibition in the Royal Scottish Academy!
And we’re overwhelmed with other news (and exciting other things) which will be put up here EVERY SINGLE DAY this week. Good, eh?
Artist-in-residence Astrid Jaekel writes about her recent success:
A few months ago I won a student competition to redesign the paperback book cover of Charlie Fletcher’s novel “Far Rockaway”. I created a papercut design inspired by various elements within the story, including the drama and the expanse of the landscape. For the final book, published by Hodder Children’s Books, elements of my designs were integrated into the cover and some pages of the book (a little challenge for you – see how many faces you can spot within my papercuts!).
Yesterday evening, during a discussion panel at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Edinburgh themed “Do you judge a book by it’s cover?” I had the chance to meet and discuss the design procedure with author Charlie Fletcher, Jonathan Gibbs, Head of Illustration at the Edinburgh College of Art, Anne McNeil, Publishing Director of Hodder Children’s Books, and Janet Smyth, Children’s Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival; all the people who are usually behind the scenes during the creation and marketing of a book. Here are some pictures of the event:
“Late last year I was commissioned to create the illustrations for a book called “Eye See a Dragon in the Glen”, a children’s book to promote eye health. The book was part of a charity fund-raising event for Children 1ST (formally RSSPCC) were several business participated in a Dragon’s Den type of business venture.
I was involved highly in the project which included trips to Glasgow to get the eye-tests in the book approved by professors at the Caledonian University and some excursions to the printers. All the illustrations were completed in three weeks and the text was also formatted by me. It was tough going as my client was new to this whole business but with a little help from some other illustrators like Cathryn Rayner and from Helena Waldron at Floris publishing for advice we had the book printed and for sale on Amazon.
Last Wednesday was the final award ceremony to see which of the groups had won. The event was held in an elaborate hall in Edinburgh Castle. After cuffing a lot of hors d’oeuvres we waited for the winners to be announced. And we won one of the awards! Our book won the award for future promise (best product for sales if we had not re-invested in book printing).
