Chris Haughton’s Illustration Masterclass at Blank Media Collective

What a weekend it’s been. Fun and busy at the same time, always a great combination!

Friday evening, I went to Blank Media Collective to listen to a talk by children’s Illustrator Chris Haughton. Here’s Chris doing much pointing and explaining.

Apart from his amusing books, Chris is also working with a couple of Fair trade organisations. People Tree for clothing and more recently Node, which was based in Nepal.

Chris created with Node, a range of toys and products to go with his books and a beautiful collection of rugs, which other illustrators designed, helping to expand Chris’s own range. You can see some of the rugs below and get an idea of how complex the weaving work really is, from the video.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be selected to attend a days Illustration Masterclass with Chris and 8 other artists, held at Blank Media Collective again. The brief was to bring along samples of two different styles of work that we liked and one folk story. During the course of the day we had to mix the two styles together into a scene from the folk story and illustrate it. Here’s a few images of the artists in action.

With Chris overseeing and tutoring, we gained some great experience and shared stories with one another about illustrating books in general.

Here’s some examples of the different artists work produced during the day.

For my inspiration, I chose Pacific Island designs and combined them with a little 1950’s and textures that I’d previously created. I think you can guess the folk story.

The leaves on the trees and the swirls on the fox, derived from this inspirational source. This was my finished piece.

A little more Pink than Red Riding Hood, but no one seemed to mind. I called it artistic licence !

I was pleasantly surprised with the results as I haven’t tried much collage work previously either. All in all a thoroughly productive and inspiring couple of days.  I wish to say a huge vote of thanks to the peeps at Blank Media Collective for giving me the opportunity to get involved and to Chris for being so informative and chilled in his approach to the masterclass. Smiles all round.