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This week students and staff are eagerly anticipating our Friday Professional Practice talk from alumni and tutor Jane Hyslop. The illustration department enjoys weekly tutorials from Jane in creating drawing journals, book binding and all things intricate and precise. After sharing in her vast knowledge, we look forward to adventuring into Jane’s own practice and hearing about her experience as a successful book artist and printmaker.
In her personal practice Jane has documented the decline of the mining industry, the dereliction of former mine workings and railways in parallel with the regeneration of the land in her native Midlothian. The flora and fauna that quickly populate deserted places fascinate her and recording this ongoing transformation is at the forefront of her work.
We look forward to hearing more about this fascinating ongoing project, her history with the University and her plans for the future.
‘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 their thought process through the way it is laid out and designed and their preferences in what they choose to map.’
In this project our second year 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, somewhere they were keen to explore or learn about through mapping it, or an imaginary place. Whichever they chose, students had to make a book that gave as much information to the viewer as possible using mainly images.
The images could be made using any medium, students chose to draw, paint, print or use digital techniques to produce there final books. The second years pushed boundaries in both there thought processes and practical techniques, resulting in a unique range of beautiful and provoking books. See below for a selection of our students completed ‘map books’.
Ryan Hamill
Rachel Donaldson
Ann MacLeod
William Hughes
Arran Stamper
Many thanks to the University Special Collections for inviting us to view a selection of rare books that have inspired many of our students to develop there book binding skills.
This Friday we will be joined by acclaimed children’s book illustrator David Roberts. David will be sharing his experiences in the illustration world and words of wisdom with our ambitious students.
After studying fashion at Manchester Metropolitan University, David worked in fashion illustration before exploring his ‘true calling’ as a children’s book illustrator. David signed up with Christine Isteed at Artist Partners in 1995 and his first book ‘Frankie Stein’s Robot’ written by Roy Apps was published in 1998. This book was shortlisted for the ‘Mother Goose Award’ for emerging illustrators.
Since then he has illustrated works by some fantastic authors such as Philip Ardagh, Daren King, Julia Donaldson, Jacqueline Wilson, Tom Baker and Chris Priestley. His most recent works include ‘Iggy Peck, Architect’ by Andrea Beaty, ‘The Troll’ by Julia Donaldson and ‘The Dunderheads’ by Paul Fleischman which was shortlisted for the 2010 Kate Greenaway Award.
We look forward to learning the ins and outs of David’s successful career, and to enjoying another unique perspective of life as an illustrator, as we do each week with our Professional Practice Lecture Series.
One hundred years ago, in 1914 Ernest Shackleton set sail with a team on the last Polar expedition of its kind, his aim to cross Antarctica via the Pole. This was the last great adventure of discovery, exploration today is rooted in scientific endeavor, and it is a story littered with intriguing details of reindeer skin sleeping bags, penguins, tinned food and lots of ice.
First year students from the Illustration Programme at Edinburgh College of Art were asked to respond to the story of the Endurance expedition and create an illustrated map of the journey. In addition to this they were asked to construct an artifact that illustrated an element of the narrative.
Maps come in all shapes and sizes. They are made for a specific purpose and include particular information that informs us, or take us on a journey. Students were asked to draw as many ideas as they could from the maps they studied in the immense collection of the National Library of Scotland – this included colour, textures used to mark terrain, timelines, lettering, borders, contour lines, latitude/longitude grids, references, size, shape….and of course the frying pan shape of Antarctica!
The results are currently exhibited in the National Library of Scotland, giving students the opportunity to share there illustrated discoveries with the public. A huge thank you to the National Library of Scotland for collaborating with us on this adventurous, challenging and greatly rewarding project.
Hello there! Now that Christmas is over I am back to the studio and back to reality. I’ve been reflecting about my work and practice almost too much recently, constantly questioning who I am, what I am creating and why. I am still at the answer: “I’m not quite sure!” What I do know is that I am inspired by what I am creating, and am excited by where it takes me.
Sketchbooks and journals are a huge element of my practice- I like to keep all my ideas and thoughts in the one place to refer to when I am in a bit of a dizzy (which is a lot of the time!). Recently, my work has been exploring themes of Obscure and Observe, where my drawings look to challenge two dimensional and three dimensional space working together as one entity. Absurd? Yes I think so too!
Here are some examples from my current sketchbook. This work tends to begin with a site: this can be from real life, a place within a film or magazine, or completely imagined. I investigate these spaces through observation, drawing, photography and collage; architectural patterns appear repeated and elongated, where perspectives and vanishing points are emphasised.
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!
Do you like food? Illustration? Maybe even books? Yes? Excellent – sharpen your knives and get the pans out, because our 2nd year student Liv Wan is about to publish her first cook book, Home-style Taiwanese Cooking.
Home-Style Taiwanese Cooking by Tsung-Yun Wan
Liv was born and raised in Taipei where she trained as a chef before moving to Edinburgh, where she now lives with her husband and baby. Liv’s illustration work is just as beautiful and layered as her cooking, and her book is well worth checking out for fans of illustration and food alike!
Looks good enough to eat!
Home-style Taiwanese Cooking is out June 16th through Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, and available for pre-order from your favourite book shop.
We are pleased to welcome Simon and Angie Lewin as part of our Professional Practice Lecture Series, this Friday at 2.30pm.
Angie and Simon run St. Jude’s Gallery as well as producing limited print runs of beautiful wallpapers and furnishing fabrics. Angie herself is a talented printmaker, painter and designer.
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.
Quite possibly Edinburgh’s longest book!Early masterpieces by aspiring young artists.Peony and her book, with sea monster cake in the background.
It was fun to have visitors in our department, a big thank you to everyone involved!
For this week’s Friday Talk we are welcoming Adrian Jeffrey from Mighty Small, an Edinburgh based agency specialising in strategy and advertising. The talk will take place at 2.30pm in the Hunter Lecture Theatre, come and listen to those wise words!
