Lane Smith's Latest Children's Book, guess what? It's a Book!

Yes its not a computer or an ipad or a kindle or a game or anything else its just a book! Hurray!

Both images courtesy of Lane Smith books theres a link above to his website and a link from there to his blog and the making of the book! Get a copy it's great, and made me laugh?

The Art of Nurture

Congratulations to Neil Hughes recent graduate on winning the regional final of the Lloyds Art of Nurture Competition. The brief asked Neil to provide a piece of visual art that would support and illustrate one of the following themes, which are the values we seek to have demonstrated by Lloyds' staff in their dealings with their clients at all times; "We act wisely - We stretch ourselves - We take ownership - We succeed together - We make it simple"

Liam Derbyshire Editorial Illustrator

Always good to hear from our alumni especially when they are working on interesting stuff. Here is a piece of work by recent graduate (2009) Liam Derbyshire who is clearly doing pretty well as an editorial illustrator, which is great to hear. this illustration was published in October in Management Today magazine for a piece about government and business. 
I think that if you had told Liam he would be an editorial illustrator after the first year at university he would not have believed you, now however he is a magazine stalwart! His work has been selected for Images and he is submitting work for Images and 3X3 magazine again and it was heartening to hear him say;
"I remember first looking at the Images annuals in the studio at uni thinking having your work appear in there was a million miles away, but with a bit of hard work and creative spark, you can get there."

Year One Images 34 trip to Blackpool

We had a fun filled family day out in Blackpool at the end of February to see the Images 34 show at Blackpool College. The exhibition which shows the best of British illustration included Alexander Barrett's Degree Show poster image from our very own preston illustration course. Not to mention several friends of the course including Mr David Hughes' Walking The Dog which won the critics' prize, Jill Calder, and Chris Vine, plus Chris Harper and Rob Gill in the Book plus many more. 
Illustration that stood out for me were  Chris Haughton's children's book work, and Noma Bar's editorial. 

Also well done to whoever hung the exhibition as it was hung in colour order and we loved that idea and might nick it one day! 
The Images 34 tour will be on a holiday and will be back in the North West in August at an apparently secret venue (not listed in the AOI website) somewhere in Clitheroe August 8th 2011 – October 9th 2011 tba!
Thanks to Year two student Rik Das for the above photos.
As part of the reportage brief the students were doing we went to do some drawing around the amusements, along the pier and down by the sea. Despite the fact the whole of the prom was being dug up and looked like a world war one trenches theme park, all in all a right nice day out.

Photos below courtesy of Ali Graney.

Thanks to Stuart Kolakovic

Many thanks to Stuart Kolakovic for an entertaining and realistic view of his freelance career to date in his visiting lecture on Friday.
Stuart was a graduate of Kingston University and is now based in the Midlands. He has been getting lots of work and exposure recently. So it was good of him to give up his time.

I think it fair to say that Stuart was less than impressed by the standard of art direction these days.
From art directors forgetting to give him the dimensions for a commission, to those whose over directing every single detail leads to a lack of creativity, to those whose only direction was " to make it brighter".

Stuart's work draws on his Serbian heritage and other Eastern European folk art traditions, and is beautifully realised . It was good to hear that his work is still based on drawing and is hand rendered
and scanned before being digitally coloured. His first love was comic book illustration, but he was disenchanted with the possibilities of making any money out of comic illustration.
 I tend to think that his was quite a realistic representation of the quality of commissioning and art direction these days, and a reminder that whilst we concentrate on creativity in university much of the day to day business of filling space with pictures can be quite mundane.
Stuart is represented by Heart illustration agency, who are linked on the right. As is Stuart's website and shop. We will overlook the fact that I didn't get any free badges.