Tag: Picture Books

15th July 2019

Macmillan Prize 2019: student success

Two of our recent graduates have every reason to celebrate:

Seobhan Hope’s book ‘Summer’s Sleep’ has been highly commended and Amy Steele has won 3rd prize for her book ‘The Lunchbox’. In this blog post Seobhan and Amy speak about their books and how it feels to be shortlisted for / awarded this prestigious picture book prize.

Shortlisted: Seobhan Hope

“Summer’s Sleep’ is the story of Summer, the giant, who can’t go to sleep. I spent my final year falling in love with and researching folk tales from around Scotland, and was particularly taken by the Story of Samhuinn, or Halloween, where tales tell of a summer and winter king, who fight to see who will be next to rule the kingdom each year in Autumn. I reinterpreted the old tale, wanting to create a meaningful story that was going to encapsulate ideas of sustainability and raise awareness around climate change and global warming in a gentle way. In my story, we find a giant called Summer exhausted, not being able to sleep, and not knowing what to do. He personifies the warm season, which can not end because its gotten too warm for winter to come. Included in the story is also a diverse group of little characters who -slightly cluelessly- set out to help the tired giant. The final result is a colorful, hopefully amusing and thought provoking wee book. The process of coming up with the story, creating the characters and assembling the book was so much fun, and I am delighted it came highly commended at the Macmillan Prize Competition!”

Winner of 3rd prize: Amy Steele

“The Lunchbook is about a banana who lives in the fruit bowl but dreams of making it into the lunchbox. Like all fruit, he wants to be taken to school and eaten up, every bit. But being a banana has its difficulties and Banana ends up lonely in the lunchbox as all his new friends get eaten. As the story goes on, Banana gets more and more forlorn and begins to rot as he struggles with his emotions. The book aims to differ from other books with food characters because these characters WANT to get eaten, which (I hope) makes people laugh.

Being chosen for 3rd place in the Macmillan prize was super exciting and actually, relieving, because I had been so worried about the story all year – the main character essentially dies – so it was a good boost to know that publishers like the idea even though it’s absolutely bonkers! I went down to London for the private view which was really interesting. I enjoyed getting to see all the other entries and chatting to the illustrators – everyone was so talented! Macmillan also asked me to come into their offices and have a chat about my book and my portfolio while I was down, which I did, and it was SO helpful to hear their feedback and encouraging words about my work.”

At the award ceremony

Jul 15, 2019

12th July 2019

Non-fiction picture book

Non-fiction picture books

Picture books are how we learn to read, following the images and letting the character lead you through the narrative. For an illustrator there is loads to get your head around including rhythm and pacing, story curves, character development, how to add drama and tone, balancing text and image on a big page. This is why it a great project to set our Year 2 illustrators! We asked students to design a non-picture book of their choice, mapping out a short dummy book first, then completing two of the spreads as resolved illustrations. Lots used a social issue as their concept, others took a more personal route. Some took a classic picture book form, and others explored a comic form. Here are a few of the results:

Illustration: Violet Colley, 2019

Illustration: Jess Birdsall, 2019

(Banner illustration: Monika Stachowiak, 2019)

Jul 12, 2019

10th June 2019

New Course – Creative Book Works

‘Successful artists’ books utilize the whole design and production process to reinforce the message of the subject matter. Shapes, folds, text patterns and materials can be used to nudge the viewer in the direction of the artist’s message, producing a unified coherent statement from the outset’

Bodman, Sarah (2005), Creating Artists’ Books. A&C Black, London.

In the Illustration programme we read books, write books, illustrate books and make books, exploring and playing with picture books, comics, magazines, zines, artists’ books and much more. So we were excited to launch a new elective course in 2019 completely dedicated to using the book form creatively. Students came from a variety of Design backgrounds and broadened their skills in printmaking and bookbinding whilst tackling some quick and low tech publishing of their own. The work was rooted in a historical overview of creative publishing, yet the main rule of the course was simply to play! We cannot wait to see what great projects will emerge next year…

(Banner image: Map of an unmade bed by Sally Delahooke, 2019)

A manifesto in the form of a creative bookwork by Alison Laing, 2019

Sculptural books Bryce Starks-Browning, 2019

Jun 10, 2019

22nd March 2017

Picture Book in Progress

In February this year our second year students made a visit to Seven Stories – National Centre for Children’s Books. This fabulous resource had both staff and students melting with delight as they oozed over original artwork for illustrations, sketchbooks and dummy books from the archive collection held at the centre.

The purpose of the visit was to study the process behind producing a picture book, looking at working with a writer, developing characters and habitats for those characters. The dummy book is vital part of the process and really exciting to see, exploring the pace and rhythm of storytelling as an illustrator plans out the pages.

Back in the studio the students were asked to design their own picture book taking the idea of home as their starting point and creating a story with a difficult social issue at the start of it. Some of the complex topics covered included parents with post traumatic stress syndrome, childhood obesity and the destruction of natural habitats for wildlife.

Alice Horn’s Picture book explored a small child’s exploration of cooking whilst his parents left him to get on with it

Enter aHeather Charters children’s book imagined a world where domestic appliances had a world of their own

Mar 22, 2017

25th April 2016

Picture Hooks Conference

On Saturday students and staff of Illustration travelled to Glasgow to attended this year’s Picture Hooks Conference at the Centre of Contemporary Arts. Now in its third year, the conference gives illustrators the opportunity to hear from leading experts from the world of children’s publishing.

There was an excellent range of speakers involved in both the making and publishing of picture books who shared their valuable knowledge with the audience.

Tessa Strickland, co-founder and Editor at Barefoot Books spoke about the things she would like to see in an applicants portfolio. “Can you tell a visual narrative? There needs to be a visible transformation, a character that changes throughout the story – there are people who are starters and people who are finishers. You need to be a starter and a finisher.” She also gave some general advice to illustrators who are trying to find their feet in the world of illustration “Life is short. Become the illustrator you want to be!”

Joel Stewart, award winning author and illustrator of over 20 books, spoke about the synthesis of digital applications and hand drawing and how the two seemed to increasingly blend together seamlessly within his work. It was interesting to hear Joel speak about how he considered himself more of an observational than an imaginative draughtsman and how he felt the teaching of academic drawing was an important part of Illustration training.

Andrea MacDonald, Executive Editor for Picture Books fromPenguin Random House gave insights in to how picture books work to comfort, challenge and open up new worlds to their audience. She gave advice on how Illustrators can approach publishers and spoke about the pressure author/illustrators can face when making a second book after a first successful one had been published.

Nicki Field, head of illustration at Jelly Agency, shared her experiences on the many other opportunities for illustrators to sell and license their work. As a Brighton graduate of Illustration Nicki was able to provide a unique insight based on her diverse background. She suggested that illustrators should define their practice and “work on what you think is you, your niche.” She advised not to set up multiple identities for different aspects for your work (just imagine they would all be called in for meetings at the same time) but instead to “be the same person but channel multiple aspects of your work in different ways” and “to be innovative and to do what you can to keep ahead”. She also spoke about the value of self-initiated work and how small ideas can have a big reach.

We met a lot of established and budding illustrators as well as interesting speakers, each offering a different perspective on the many aspects of the picture book and publishing industry. Altogether this was a very inspiring day for us!

Tessa Strickland, co-founder and Editor at Barefoot Books