Tag Archives: Illustrators

Literary Illustrators: ‘The Houses Of Sherlock Holmes’ By Matthew Rice

Dartmoor’s Baskerville Hall is one of the most famous country houses in English fiction. The arrival at its doors of Dr Watson, in the company of Sir Henry Baskerville, is a vivid piece of cinematic direction, artfully combining the Gothic horror tale with the more modern taste for detective thrillers.

Passing a ruined black-granite lodge, Watson and Baskerville go through the gates that are ‘a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron’ before reaching an avenue where ‘old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel’. The hall is a ‘heavy block’, with a projecting porch, its façade ‘draped in ivy’ within which the odd window or heraldic display can be seen.

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Video Profile: Icelandic Illustrator Kristjana S. Williams In “Wonderland”

Step inside the eye-popping studio of Icelandic illustrator Kristjana S. Williams. Kristjana’s work blends traditional Victorian engravings with digital collage techniques to create layered landscapes full of hidden details. Here, we see a sneak preview of her latest V&A commission: creating a series of original illustrations for a new book, accompanying the exhibition Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser.

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Top Artist Profile: Italian Illustrator Carlo Stanga

Born in Italy, Carlo has been always deeply passionate about drawing.

After graduating in Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan, he chose to further his education attending art and design studies. He collaborated with the premier italian designer Bruno Munari, an amazing experience that influenced his way to see the world.

As an editorial and advertising illustrator, Carlo works with major italian magazines and newspapers and with international clients in Europe and in the U.S.

His distinctive style continually wins Italian Illustration awards and the work has been selected by The American Illustration Annual and won the Gold Medal Award in Creative Quarterly’s #15 contest and Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts.

In 2015 he wrote and illustrated  I am Milan, followed by I am London and  I am New York the first title of a new book collection, published by Moleskine, dedicated to the main cities of the world.

Carlo lives and works in Berlin.

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Profiles: Italian Architect & Illustrator Federico Babina – “Abstract Stories”

I am an Italian ( since 1969)
architect and graphic designer (since 1994)
that lives and works in Barcelona (since 2007)
but mostly I’m a curious person (since ever).

Every day I try to rediscover a way to observe the world as through the eyes of a child. Children are able to have a vision of things totally
uninhibited and without the conditioning of the experience. The children’s drawings are always amazing and beautiful in their spontaneous simplicity and clarity.

I like trying to explain the world I see through different techniques of expression. I like the richness of the language and the diversity of its forms. I do not want to confine me in a prison of a style or shape.

Drawing and illustration are for me one of the ways to recount and photograph the thoughts, feelings and emotions. Every picture has a story and every picture is a witness of a story.

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Top Artists Profiles: Illustrator Gabriella Marsh – “Sublime Lines”

Gabriella Marsh is a freelance designer, illustrator and animator based in London. She loves drawing, painting and all things hand rendered so all work begins on paper before being set on the computer, tidied up and make to move. She is currently at the Royal College of Art doing an MA in experimental animation.

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World’s Top Artists: Japanese GIF Illustrator Maori Sakai – “The Sublime Simplicity Of Movement”

Maori Sakai logoJapanese artist Maori Sakai creates humorous drawings with pen on paper, that are often animated. Each gif is rendered largely in pastels and captures simple movements: a record spinning on a turntable, rain falling outside a window, and butterflies hovering around hydrangeas. Many of Sakai’s short animations, in addition to glimpses into her process, can be found on Instagram and Tumblr. 

 

 

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Art Documentary: “Words And Pictures – Ian Beck”

Directed, Filmed and Edited by: Edmund Beck

Music composed by: Simon Whiteside
Interview and Graphics by: Laurence Beck
Sound mix by: David Mead

Ian Beck - IllustratorShort documentary film about Author, illustrator Ian Beck. A brief look at his life and where he works. Included are, his inspirations from childhood reading, the making of the artwork for Elton John’s 1973 album ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ and his current project in collaboration with Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) creating a Myriorama.

 

Ian Archibald Beck is an English children’s illustrator and author. In addition to his numerous children’s books, he is also known for his cover illustration on Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. More than a million copies of his books have been sold worldwide.

Lockdown Art: Italian Illustrator Pierpaolo Rovero – “Rooftop Views”

Pierpaolo Rovero - London Drinks Tea“Imagine all the people” is a project by Turin-based artist and illustrator Pierpaolo Rovero that fantasizes about the way people around the word spend their time in quarantine. Depicting a diverse range of metropolitan panoramas, from New York and Paris, to Jerusalem, to Tokyo, Rovero imagines the citizens of each city indulging in the same activity while stuck at home, allowing viewers to catch glimpses through windows, balconies and skylights. 

Pierpaolo Rovero Athens Plays Sports

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Literary Arts: New Website Archives Work Of British Illustrator And Designer Peter Campbell (1937-2011)

The website is about the work of the designer, writer and illustrator Peter Campbell (1937‑2011). The intention is to present an archive of Peter’s illustration, design and editorial work, as well as occasional selections from his writing.

British Illustrator Peter Campbell - London Review of Books

When asked what he did for a living, Peter would usually say he was a designer, or, a typographer. Designing for print – books, exhibition catalogues, magazines, posters – Peter Campbell - Self-Portraittook up the most substantial part of his time, at the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s and thereafter as a freelance. He was also an illustrator, a journalist, an author of children’s books, an editor and a publisher. The great range of his professional work, and his encompassing interest in the work of others, made him a collaborator sought out by writers, publishers and artists.

Diana Souhami, who worked with Peter often, wrote in the Guardian after his death: “He had the ability to conceptualise what each publishing project needed and to get it right. He was hugely and diversely productive, but seldom hit a wrong note.”

Discussing his journalism in her appreciation in the London ReviewMary‑Kay Wilmers wrote: “There are people whom getting a grip doesn’t suit, who don’t want to be confined. One can honour the world in depth or across a wide range and there were few aspects of the world that Peter didn’t wish to honour.”

He probably would have been delighted by – and certainly modestly sceptical of – Alan Bennett’s appraisal, in the posthumous publication of a catalogue of his pictures in Artwork, that he was “an heir to Ardizzone, Bawden and Ravilious.”

Peter Campbell was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1937. In 1960 he emigrated to London where he lived for the rest of his life. He died in 2011.

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Exhibition Tour: British Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (Tate Britain)

Although our galleries are temporarily closed we wanted to share the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition at Tate Britain with you. Join Tate curators Caroline Corbeau-Parsons and Alice Insley as they discuss the iconic illustrator’s short and scandalous career.

Before his untimely death aged twenty-five, Beardsley produced over a thousand illustrations. He drew everything from legendary tales featuring dragons and knights, to explicit scenes of sex and debauchery. His fearless attitude to art continues to inspire creatives more than a century after his death.

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Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-1898) was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.