This week’s Illustration Friday word is SCARY.
Grab your 3D glasses to view the scary aliens below which are from The Great Bowdini’s Optical Illusions, published by Tango Books. It took a bit of research and fiddling about with the red and green channels to get the desired effect. More of the background material for this spread can be found here.
Irma will be showing work at the SAF Art Fair 2011 on Saturday 10th.
The fair, organised by Southwark Arts Forum, is part of this week-end’s Thames Festival . Look for her in Hay’s Galleria on Jubilee Walk on the south bank of the river between 12 noon and 8pm.
John will be signing and selling books at the Gillespie Park Festival on Sunday 11th.
This takes place at Gillespie Park Local Nature Reserve, 91 Drayton Park, Highbury, London, N5 1PH. The event starts at 12 noon and finishes at 5 pm.
In response to Illustration Friday’s word of the week, INFLUENCE, I’m showing a picture from my book, It’s Magic. On each spread, the appearance of the magician, Carlos the Chameleon, is influenced by his surroundings.
One of the Creative Partnership projects I was involved in recently was in Buttsbury Juniour School in Billericay, where I was chosen (by the children, no less) to come on board for a series of literacy workshops with Royal Opera House CP.
I worked alongside poet, playwright and workshop leader, Joseph Coehlo, bringing an illustrator’s slant to the proceedings, in a series of one day workshops with the two yr 4 classes, which involved show-and-tell, pop-up creations and making books.
The idea for a collapsible cardboard toolbox came out of the planning meeting – hit the kids with a pop-up on a grand scale to prepare them for the paper engineering workshops to follow. It would also function as a container and a focal point, getting across the idea of writing and illustrating skills as tools.
The box made it’s way to the school ahead of me – so I was there in spirit before my actual arrival.
The children, when I did meet them, were an extremely enthusiastic bunch and it was so much fun to show my books and talk about my work. They also produced some brilliant pop-up books of their own. Below is some images of the work in progress.
We even managed to fit in a ‘live drawing’ session alongside Joe’s poetry and storytelling with the year 3s.
Combel Editorial, the spanish publisher who have taken my books, time and time again, have produced this funky, little film to promote Detective Paws, or should I say, El detectiu Grapes.
Never mind, here’s some preliminary scetches from the living room spread for your enjoyment. JOHN
Cutting from the Islington Tribune.
A number of us from the Islington Writers for Children booked a stall at the Cinamon and Silk Craft Fair just before Christmas. The photo also features a few of our groupies.
Islington Writers for Children (IWFC) were out in force yesterday evening (well, three of us were), when I was joined by Marion Rose and Lynda Waterhouse to brave the severe weather conditions to advance the cause of children’s literacy, promote the Buzz about Books blog and sell our books.
We set up shop at the annual Christmas craft fair at St John’s Highbury Vale School, where, despite the snow, there was a good turnout at what proved to be a thoroughly enjoyable event – something definitely worth doing again. JOHN
Two years ago, to the date, I noticed a newspaper article about this artist’s then-intention to give away 1,000 hand screenprinted paintings by leaving them around the streets of London.
On the night of Friday 14 November 2008, 20 teams of distributors would begin distributing the individually-numbered, unique multiples at the edges of the capital, working their way towards the centre by daybreak. Mention was also made of ‘well-known and not-so-well known landmarks’.
Our son figured that someone on a push-bike hitting as many local and central landmarks as possible, at a certain time of day, might be in with a chance of coming across one of the prints.
On this basis, I (note the use of the first person pronoun – singular) set out at 5:15 am on the Saturday morning to do a two and a half hour circular bike trip of the capital in search of some art. I did enjoy cycling across a deserted Millennium Bridge at 6:30 in the morning – think early episodes of The Avengers or Doctor Who – but, ultimately, returned to base empty-handed. Sad, I know, and something one should really keep nice and quiet about.
But then I thought, no! I’m not going to let my efforts go to waste! I decided if I didn’t get anything from Adam Neate, then Adam Neate would get something from me! And so a box was born…
and designed, made and dispatched to Adam at his gallery, the Elms Lesters Rooms.
And no more was thought about it.
Some time later, I discovered, to my amazement, that the box had been featured in Adam’s book about the event. Needless to say, I was thrilled and touched.
I also got to meet the man himself who kindly signed my copy of the book. Result!
My publisher tells me that Pirate Treasure Hunt has been picked up by Oxfam, so drop by the nearest branch and get your copy – unless you live in the Outer Hebrides, in which case go here.
When I first came up with the idea for this project, I wanted to include a fold-out treasure map which could be used alongside the book. I liked the idea that the kids would relate the symbols on the map with the ‘real life’ images in the pictures, and that they could trace their journey as they hunted for the treasure. I did a similar thing recently in Detective Paws when I created a fold-out notebook for the dog detective. I also designed a plastic ‘gold’ coin for the treasure chest at the end, thus, hopefully, increasing the pay-off. Unfortunately, when I tried to spend it in Tesco, they were having none of it.
Pirate Treasure Hunt also marks the point at which I was let loose on the paper engineering side of things. I went a bit mad on glue points and card usage with the result that the book came in completely over-spec’ed, much to the dismay of the publisher. However, the book has more than earned its keep, being one of the more successful that I’ve done for Tango Books and it’s still one of my favourites. It’s even been published in Japan – how cool is that?
John O'Leary 