Recently our talented third years have been working on a great professional practice brief with the National Museum of Scotland. The challenge was to design a unique children’s christmas activity that incorporated elements of the museum. It was also important for our students to think practically as the selected design will be produced on a large scale for this years festive season. Here is a small selection of the inventive entries, we look forward to announcing the lucky winner.
Well it has certainly been a playful week in the Illustration Department, as our students worked on the collaborative brief ‘Fun and Games’. On Monday morning our young illustrators were divided into groups of 3 or 4, mixing year groups, interests and characters. The teams set to work designing their own hand crafted games, which were tested in a whole department games session and award ceremony on Friday afternoon. The results were varied, inventive and thoroughly entertaining. We are looking forward to our next collaborative project already.
Last Friday our department welcomed a group of pupils, teachers, parents and grandparents from Towerbank Primary School. The children from Portobello had been working with our Second Year students and the author Vivian French to create a picture book about a sea monster.
Our students incorporated the children’s drawings into a large book, as well as creating little sea monster books of their own, both of which they presented to the pupils on Friday.
It was fun to have visitors in our department, a big thank you to everyone involved!
If you find yourself all dressed up and with nowhere to go, why not stop by the Filmhouse Bar on Lothian Road to catch “Portraits of Italian Cinema”, a collaboration between the Italian Institute and ECA’s Illustration course. 22 of our students and 6 Italian artists living in Edinburgh produced a selection of portraits of the greatest stars of Italian cinema, including directors, actors and actresses such as Federico Fellini, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Toto. A winner will be chosen soon and receive a six month pass for the Filmhouse!
The finished posters look fantastic so go and have a look – the exhibition is running until the 22nd of March.
First and Second Year students have been teaming up over the last week to produce small editions of books about Edinburgh’s famous Grassmarket as part of a collaborative book project between the Illustration Students at Edinburgh College of Art and Analogue Books to celebrate Book week Scotland.
Julie from Analogue Books did a splendid job of starting off our students last Wednesday and Thursday by showing them around her shop, and it has been very exciting to see their projects develop from early sketches and location drawings into fully fledged books and zines.
Come along at 2.30pm tomorrow, Friday 29th November for the book launch and students’ presentations in room 2.13 of Evolution House – samples of the books will be on display at Analogue Books from Saturday 30th November until Saturday 7th December. Come and have a look!
The Third Year students recently tried their hands at animating with the help of Michael Kirkham. Each of them created work in response to 20 seconds of Chopin’s Polonaise in F Sharp Minor, which was then put together to form ten minutes’ worth of eclectic moving images. Impressive work from our first-time animators!
The Second year illustration students were set the challenge this Semester of constructing and delivering a COLLABORATIVE DRAWING PROJECT or EVENT.
In groups of 3 or 4 they rose to the challenge and the results were as varied as they were interesting. The task also got us thinking more about what collaboration is, and whether sometimes we form collectives rather than actually collaborating….
Some of the drawings presented last week are shown below.
Andrea, George and Michael met at the Central Library and used this as their starting point. From there they chose to follow some of the individuals they met, leading them to another location, this time at random. They continued this, drawing what they found and later amalgamating the drawings into sculptures.
Joe, Claire, Nyree and Sophie created a drawing event in a café. They decided to spend the event drawing one another, and for each portrait set themselves a challenge – for example drawing with their eyes closed, drawing with two hands and playing consequences…with some interesting discoveries along the way!
Alina, Tanya and Kristina went back to their shared Eastern European roots and explored the negative stereotypes and positive memories of each of their homes. This proved to be an emotional drawing experience in many ways! 
Lizzie, Ruth, Ailsa and Celeste juxtaposed nouns and verbs in their drawing collaboration to produce random stories. They then interacted with one another’s drawings to interesting effect. This proved a fun experience with lots to learn about collaboration for next time. 
Second year Illustration students have been working hard this Semester on a collaboration with Dalmeny Primary School, Edinburgh.
Students from ECA visited the students at the primary school and spent time devising a recipe for each other made up of things such as their likes and dislikes, what they would be if they were an animal, what colour would they be….
The result is a fantastic collection of weird and wonderful interpretations these recipes in the form of a most unusual set of plates!
School Meals will be running at South Queensferry Library
9 Shore Road, South Queensferry
Thursday 2 May – Friday 17 May 2013
Mon & Wed 1pm-8pm, Tue, Thurs, Fri, Sat 10am–5pm
Posters of the plates will be on view at:
Waverley Court (courtyard level)
4 East Market Street, Edinburgh
Monday 29 April – Friday 10 May 2013
Our thanks go to Dalmeny Primary School students and staff for their hard work and enthusiasm, and to Jonathan, Vivian, Cate and Kasia from ECA. We are also grateful to South Queensferry Library and the City of Edinburgh Council for exhibiting the works. Well done to Kate Berry for her hard work photographing the plates and producing the posters for Waverley Court.
David Jones from Second Year has been working with Bedlam Theatre recently to create this poster for their current production.
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:
Photos by Chris Scott 2013
