The work of 4th year student Laura Griffin graces the cover of this year’s Edinburgh Friends magazine, an University of Edinburgh publication dedicated to Development and Alumni Engagement. Laura was chosen as the winner of a competition for the cover within the 4th year of ECA’s illustration course.
Congratulations to our former student Cat O’Neil for winning the prestigious Emerging Talent Award at the 2013 Cheltenham Illustration Awards for her mini-comic “The Way We Move”. Well done Cat!
Make sure you check out the rest of her work as well, it’s stunningly good stuff.
The Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show opened with a bang for another year on Friday. The Illustration Department is delighted to be showing off creations from 20 Undergraduate designers and 8 Postgraduates from our MFA Programme.
Representatives from the industry and the press came along for a Preview on Thursday evening, offering interest and encouragement to all the students as they nervously presented their work.
The Degree is open to the public until 9 June where the public can view and purchase work as well as meet the students. More details on the Degree Show can be found at: http://www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2013
Congratulations to Holly Sterling for her success in the Macmillan Prize!
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.
We look forward to seeing her work in print!
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.
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
Holly Jameson writes about her recent award win:
“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).
And we won this daft little statue of a dragon.”
