Wednesday 20 October 2010

Folio - The Folio Society Magazine April -June 1967

The Folio Society and House of Illustration are sponsoring a competition to illustrate The Outsider by Albert Camus. The Folio Society (click the title link) publishes beautiful illustrated books for adults (rather than for children) by subscription and they have worked with many of the country's finest illustrators. By a strange coincidence Mr Bainbridge from the Disciples of Design discovered some copies of the Folio Society Magazine from the 1960s that were once a part of the Graphics course archive. I have posted an article here by Nigel Lambourne from 1967 (I was nearly 2 years old!)





























Above you can read a fascinating short article about autographic techniques in book illustration by Nigel Lambourne (1919-1988) an excellent draughtsman Nigel Lambourne was an illustrator and printmaker who trained at the RCA. By "Autographic" here he means illustrations that are directly printed into the publication rather than being photographically reproduced and then printed. 
I may feature Nigel Lambourne as another "forgotten" illustrator shortly.
The final illustration is a frontispiece and is a reference to the last phrase in the article and is by John Lawrence a nice two colour print from a plastic "plate".

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Forgotten illustrators; Paul Hogarth ( 1917-2001)

This is the first in an occasional series of profiles I have decided to start about "forgotten" illustrators. When I get blank looks on the mention of an illustrator's name I will probably add them to this list. Paul Hogarth is someone most current students (in my experience) have never heard of.
Back in the eighties as a design  student in Manchester Paul Hogarth was one of the illustrators I took for granted. His work had adorned the covers of Shakespeare in paperback when I was at school, and the novels of Graham Greene when I was catching up on some reading from the library. 
When I was studying illustration his work was everywhere, not only in the Manchester Polytechnic collection I seem to remember.His prints seemed to be on sale everywhere, particularly through the Francis Kyle Gallery, whose posters appeared on the Poly noticeboard, and I am sure I remember them on sale at Habitat?
His reportage work appeared in magazines and in books celebrating Graham Greene country, Gerald Durrell country, and John Betjeman country. Originally from Kendal, Cumbria/ Westmorland, he had studied at Manchester Art School, though not especially celebrated by the students when I was there, he was eventually honoured by the Met in 1999. 
He was a prolific and successful illustrator. He was an excellent draughtsman, and watercolour painter whose "descriptive" work especially of buildings and landscape are light and characterful. 
He led an interesting life too, described as an "angry young man", a left winger he ran off to join the Spanish Civil War aged 17. Later still he painted camouflage during WW2.. 
He travelled extensively and this formed the basis for much of his observationally-based work. His autobiography is entitled Drawing on Life.







Sunday 10 October 2010

Andy Thomson for The Gift

























Andy Thomson has produced this illustration for friend of prestonillustration Mr Andrew Griff Griffin's up coming short film "The Gift". Griff kindly came to visit Preston illustration students last year. The film was co written by Griff and author Philip Ardagh and filmed in Kent. Intriguingly described as a story about a pylon, a nest and a gift. We look forward to seeing the film.
You can follow the making of the film here.
http://www.storknest.co.uk/
Whilst Andy's blog is a click away on the title link!