V&A Illustration Awards 2011

French illustrator and regular contributor to the Guardian Olivier Kugler has won the V&A Illustration Award 2011.

Kugler's reportage/diary illustrations of a truck driver's journey across Iran have won the top prize at the V&A Illustration awards.The illustrations were created for French quarterly reportage magazine XXI and were based on his his own travels in Iran with the truck driver Massih. Kugler and his driving companion took a four-day journey across Iran carrying bottled water to the Persian Gulf.
His winning illustrations were described as a "...stunning work. This is where drawing can top photography and copy," said judge Rob Ryan. Kugler won £2000 first prize for editorial illustration as well as an additional £2000 as the overall winner.
Laura Carlin was awarded the prize for best illustrated book for her work on The Iron Man, praised by judges for "her sophisticated approach to colour and scale" in what they said was "a stunning example of book illustration and production".

 Their artwork will be displayed for free in the V&A's 20th-Century Galleries until 17 December.

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize 2011

As reported in The Guardian Review on Saturday; Australian illustrator Shaun Tan has been presented with The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Stockholm last week. The prize is worth nearly half a million pounds and is awarded to authors, artists, and illustrators for their lifetime achievements in the spirit of Lindgren's famous illustrated heroine Pippi Longstocking.

Tan follows in an illustrious lineage including Maurice Sendak, and Phillip Pullman who were previous winners. He was commended as "a masterly visual storyteller who combines brilliant, magical narrative skill with deep humanism".  A justifiable award for a great, and innovative illustrator, who all in all has had a pretty good year - his picture book "The Lost Thing" was adapted into an animation and won the Oscar for best animated short film earlier this year.

BA(Hons) Illustration Degree Show 2011 Private View

The boards are up, shoes, and faces are being painted white, yes the Degree Show is being built! And its looking good! Roll up Roll up!
Opening night is Friday 10th June from 5.30pm. We hope you can make it. The illustrators will be showing in the illustration studio 214a in Victoria Building on the second floor see you there for some refreshing beers and some pictures.
The poster was illustrated by Stavros Siamptanis.

Naomi Jones is Highly Commended in the Macmillan Prize

Well done Naomi Jones (Year Three student) for being one of only 13 highly commended entries in the Macmillan Prize this year. Her work was selected from over 280 entries to this year's Macmillan Prize for Children's Book Illustration 2011.

Her book which was all hand printed using lino and collograph blocks, then montaged together digitally, also knitted together a series of well known phrases into a surreal story called Raining Cats and Dogs.

Naomi's work will be on show in the Prize winners exhibition at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross from May 24th -27th May.

Stavros Siamptanis nominated for the D&AD Student Awards

Congratulations to Stavros Siamptanis in Year Three Illustration for his nomination for D&AD Illustration Craft category sponsored by Diesel for this grand scheme for Pink Floyd- beautifully crafted vector illustrations. He is already a winner, but lets hope he goes on to pick up a pencil in the awards in July eh? You can see the other nominated pieces for the Illustration category on the D&AD website, in fact all the entries for every category are up there.
The UCLAN viscomm courses (Advertising, Graphics, Digital Graphics, and Illustration) picked up 3 nominations in total and several entries will be published in the  annual. For full details see the Disciples of Design website link here:
http://www.thedisciplesofdesign.co.uk/2011/05/dad-student-awards/

For more information about Stavros's work look here: http://www.stavross.com/

Drawing machine

Danish designers Eskerex have made this incredible drawing machine shown at the Milan Furniture Fair follow the link and watch the video. If you liked spirograph as a kid like me you will love this! Check out Its Nice That where I first saw this work.

Spring Fling and Lizzy Stewart

I have just been in Dumfries and Galloway for a short break in Kircudbright. It was beautiful, we stayed in an amazing country house b&b - which was just brilliant in every way. Kirkudbright is known as Artists' Town as many artists have lived and worked in the town over the years.

I picked up a brochure from the local museum about the "Spring Fling" an Open Studio and arts event held in the area at the end of May, the brochure cover, and inside illustrations were illustrated by Lizzy Stewart. I liked the illustration so much it got me to re look at her work. (So click on the title link to see more of Lizzy Stewart's lovely drawings).

And here is Lizzy Stewart's recent poster design for a special showing by Loco of Submarine, a movie I hope to see as soon as possible it looks great! Loco are selling the poster as a print you can find details via Lizzy Stewart's site.

Here is a portrait of Naoko from Norwegian Wood I lifted from her website because I know one or two first year students were illustrating this very same subject recently. 

I also really do like her self published book "Toska".

You can read lots of interesting stuff about her work, plus advice for students on her blog: http://thingsilikeaboutoday.blogspot.com/ 

Lizzy Stewart is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art and is represented by Eastwing Illustration Agency.