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We would like to congratulate our MA student Ailsa Johnson, who has won this year’s highly competitive Penguin Design Award in the Children’s book cover category.
The task was to illustrate and design a book cover for ‘Emil and the Detectives’ by German author Erich Kästner, a classic novel for Children set in 1930’s Berlin. To see the original brief and the shortlisted entries and to read the judges’ thoughts please follow this link. Here is what one of the judges, acclaimed writer and illustrator of children’s books, Anthony Browne, had to say about Ailsa’s entry:
‘The design conveys a real sense of story, inviting us into the book – making us want to find out what’s going on. Very clever and very funny. Beautifully designed, this would attract attention on the bookshop shelves. I’ve never seen a cover that looks like this before’
Ailsa will be graduating from Edinburgh College of Art with an MA in Illustration this August and while we wish her best of luck for her future we have no doubt that a busy and very creative time awaits her!
Our degree show 2016 is in full swing! Here are some images of last week’s private viewing where we were delighted to meet our students’ families and friends and catch up with graduates from previous years.
The degree show will be running until 5th June, 11-5pm with late night openings on Wednesday 1st June and Thursday 2nd June from 11-8pm. Come along, see some emerging talent’s fresh work and perhaps even pick up an affordable piece of art from our students’ degree show shop?
Alfie Onion is here! Launched last week at the Edinburgh Bookshop, this is one of the many books of children’s fiction and adventure written by our very own Vivian French. We would like to congratulate her and wish Alfie all the best!
We are extremely lucky to have Viv as a writing tutor at ECA, where she supports our students in developing their own authorial language and storytelling skills, which benefit their picture books projects, comics or illustrated poetry.
As one of the initiators of ‘Picturehooks’, a Scottish Picture Book Illustrator’s mentoring scheme, Viv also does much to support the development of Illustrators after graduation, and has contributed much to the appreciation and awareness of picture books as an art form.
Viv’s great enthusiasm is not only valued by ECA’s Illustration department but was also recently recognised by Her Majesty when Viv was appointed an MBE for services to literature, literacy, illustration, and the arts. We’re proud of you Viv, keep rocking!
During the past eight years we have run the Drawing Book projects with various primary schools in Edinburgh, as well as in Orkney. This has involved tackling a variety of themes in collaboration between art students and school pupils. Animal Characteristics, Feelings, Olympics, Sea Monsters, Opposites and School Meals are but a few of these, and now we have Superheroes.
All of this has been made possible by Vivian French, who has guided us through Drawing Book collaborations, far and wide, with great skill, wisdom and good humour.
Our visits to Wardie Primary School have been a totally inspiring and creative experience for everyone. The children are natural, spontaneous, wise, and good humoured.
To make a connection between art college students and children at the very start of their education and causes us to consider the fundamental values of drawing, thinking, telling stories and picturing things.
The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh City Council Literacy Department, and the University of Edinburgh have given their support to Drawing Book.
What powers would one wish to have, and how might these be used towards the greater good of mankind? This is the question. We learned the answers and much more besides from the Wardie Superheroes project.
by Jessica Kettle (Illustration Artist in Residence)
So, the weather is getting cold, the days are getting shorter and that can only mean one thing, it was time for another drawing trip to Oban.
For the third year running, this November saw a set of enthusiastic ECA students from Illustration, Graphic Design and Animation don their best waterproof clothing and hit the small Scottish town of Oban for 4 days of intensive drawing time.
After a rocky start of cancelled trains and torrential rain to greet our arrival, we finally arrived at the youth hostel late Thursday evening, soaked to the skin but, luckily, with spirits not too dampened!
The students were given a few small briefs to get them started and inspired. A map of Oban with a small red dot on was their challenge for the next morning, to find the place the dot represented and explore it. Each student was also given a collection of clear plastic bags for collecting interesting bits and bobs they encountered on their adventures. These bags returned in the evenings with anything from old books to dead crabs in them and once the sun went down, the tables of the youth hostel’s kitchen were monopolized by students, drawing, painting and chatting about their day’s discoveries.
No trip to Oban would be complete without a trip to the pub so on Friday night we hit our local watering hole, armed with sketchbooks and drawing implements. Needless to say, we stood out like a sore thumb, taking over about three tables, nursing 5 drinks between us and playing rounds of ‘exquisite corpse’, but luckily the locals tolerated us with good grace and we even won a bottle of wine from the pub quiz (could have been the whole quiz we won if it hadn’t been for that damn geography round)!
Saturday, we took a ferry to the Isle of Mull. Commuting didn’t stop us from continuing to fill our sketchbooks (although trying to take a photo did land Astrid with a slap on the arse for getting in the way of an angry woman’s sea view!
Overall the trip was a great success. Students from different disciplines were able to meet, share ideas and techniques and most importantly, step outside the confines of their studio routine to refresh their practise, taking some of that fresh sea air back with them!
The start of the academic year saw the ten new First Year students take a drawing trip to the Water of Leith. It was a chilly day, so drawing eventually turned to collecting of objects to save students’ fingers from turning an unhealthy shade of blue.
Over the following three weeks, the students combined those objects as well as experiences and impressions from the drawing trip into hand-drawn designs in the studio, and then went on to learn how to turn these into repeating patterns by cutting and moving parts around.
The finished patterns can now be admired at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (open daily between 10am and 4pm). Go and have a look, it’s well worth a visit!
Some of the patterns created by First Year studentsA bright day at the Water of Leith Visitor CentreStudents with their workMore students with more work
