Working Drawings Exhibition at the University of Westminster

'Working Drawings" is on tour to London namely the University of Westminster this month. The exhibition was curated by Lee Ford and members of the Visual Communication team at Sheffield Hallam and showcases the initial hidden process of visual thinking and problem solving. 

Private View - Thursday 22nd of March, 

London Gallery West. 

Pick me up

PICK ME UP - The contemporary graphic arts fair will be at Somerset House in London from the 22nd March to the 1st April 2012. With a residency from illustration collective Peepshow, the fair showcases the best new work from around the UK and the world with original works and prints available to purchase from just £10 and with loads of events and workshops to get involved with.
Graphic Artists (or illustrators as they used to be known) David Sparshott, Jon McNaught, Kristjana S Williams, Martin Nicolaussen, Matthew the Horse, Michael Kirkham, Mimi Leung, Niki Pilkington, and many others are showing with Galleries, and collectives from all over the world.
Follow the link for more information.

Katie Saunders shortlisted for Sheffield Children's Book Award 2012

Very pleased to hear that former UCLan graduate and Advocate art illustrator Katie Saunders has been shortlisted for the Sheffield Children’s book award in the Baby category. Katie's book Touch and Explore Little Frog is full of touch and feel patches and textures designed to engage little ones. Last year over 5000 Sheffield children took part in the Book Award and Baby Book Award project making it one of the largest local authority schemes in the country. The children who read and voted for their favourite books also attended the award ceremony in Sheffield which was also attended by 15 of the shortlisted authors and illustrators.

Baby book illustration is an area of illustration that few students think of as especially challenging or glamorous however I think it an incredibly difficult area of design in which to innovate and yet incredibly important to the development of children. Pre school children deserve to have beautifully designed and well considered books and illustration - it is easy to be condescending to this area of children's illustration. Katie has been in constant employment as an illustrator since graduating in.... ahem... a few years ago. She has produced consistently excellent work as a children's illustrator and she deserves this recognition by the audience she works for.

seventhirtyeight

Gratuitous self promotion

I have published a newspaper project called seventhirtyeight and linked a blog to it click the link to have a look!

Year Two Editorial brief

Former UCLan graduate Ben Tallon visited the Year Two illustrators to speak about his work and to set an editorial brief. This was an illustration project for a Big Issue article that he had recently tackled about homelessness and the help available to people. The second years have had a couple of days on the brief and the result is: these could be used although they don't quite answer the brief...

Jake Tyas included in Curious Pursuits Exhibition at the Portico Gallery

Year Three illustrator Jake Tyas has been selected for Porter and Jenkinson's Curious Pursuits Show at the Portico Gallery in Manchester.

Art Historian collective Porter & Jenkinson aim to showcase the best contemporary art responding to the lost themes and ideas behind the dark, strange, curious and peculiar Victorian aesthetics.
Their premier exhibition Curious Pursuits challenges the conservative image that is frequently associated with the Victorians. Often perceived as prudish and straight-laced, the Victorian’s obsession with – to mention a few pursuits – erotica, theatrical spectacles, the sensational, murder stories and freak shows, has long been pushed to the corners of society’s collective mind. Porter & Jenkinson aim to bring these forgotten ideas to the foreground and explore the responses and reactions in our contemporary society.
The pieces forming the exhibition are what Porter & Jenkinson deem to be intriguing works that depict and celebrate all things curious.

Ronald Searle 1920 - 2011

Very sad to hear of the death of Ronald Searle in my view one of the country's greatest ever illustrators and certainly one of it's best draughtsmen. Recognised in the USA and in France where he was both honoured and hugely influential. 
Searle was genuinely much more than a cartoonist. Anybody who has seen his drawings from his time as a prisoner of war in Burma during world war two can be under no doubt as to the strength of his conviction as an artist.


"Despite his own sufferings, Searle continued to draw what he saw, hiding his sketches under the mattresses of men dying of cholera to prevent their discovery by Japanese guards. “I desperately wanted to put down what was happening, because I thought if by any chance there was a record, even if I died, someone might find it and know what went on,” he recalled."


He was probably busiest in the 1950s and early 60s producing some fantastic reportage, illustrating over a hundred books not to mention his editorial, and design work. 
In this country Ronald Searle is known almost solely as a cartoonist and for creating the St Trinians. It makes me sad that he was not subject of more honour in this country during his lifetime.