I thought that I would treat you lucky people to some up to date news about what’s going on in my world… aside from the blogging and walking and photography that is. In return I have a favour to ask of you too.
I am on a journey of writing and illustrating a children’s picture book. I’ve been reading books about the industry and chatting to people online too and I realise what a HUGE task lies ahead of me, but I want to make it happen. With an aim to secure a book deal or alternatively to set off for Bologna Children’s Book Fair this time next year with a book that I’m proud of tucked under my arm and a portfolio to match.
You guys and gals who read my blog have a keen eye for design and colour and appreciate the work that illustrators do. You can help by telling me what you like about my illustration and also what doesn’t work for you, and why. All feedback is very useful in my experience.
I’ve been experimenting with many different styles of illustrating, using textures and hand painted elements as well as working with photoshop and it would be so useful for me to find out what you really think. So come on, please don’t spare your thoughts, just add some comments to the blog or contact me via email craig@fishink.co.uk or on twitter, my name there is wwwfishinkcouk or you can even just ‘like’ me or tell your friends about me on facebook under FISHINK, it all helps.
Experimenting with pattern is also important as I want to keep my textile design roots.
Hope to hear from you soon and any help or guidance you can offer will be gratefully accepted. Thanks as always for reading. Craig
Some funny facts I discovered about my site online. Fishinkblog is apparently ranked at 3,301,942 in the United States and 185,505 in the United Kingdom. It has had 95,430 views to date since starting mid 2010 and has been viewed in 93 different countries, including Oman, the Cayman Islands and Greenland. It’s busiest day was 21st October 2011 when google did a tribute to Mary Blair and I had a blog posting about her too. To celebrate this amazing artist I’ve written a more comprehensive guide to Mary Blair which will appear here very soon. If you have any friends who would like Fishinkblog, then please pass on the link https://fishinkblog.wordpress.com and we can develop an online like minded community 🙂 See you soon.
Ken Wong . Fantasy Illustrator.
Ken Wong is an artist/illustrator/designer from Adelaide, Australia, who is currently working as an Art Director at a computer game studio called Spicy Horse, in Shanghai.
He has done visualisation and art direction work for a range of clients, mostly in the games industry. His art is mostly digital, although often it begins as a pencil sketch, using Adobe Photoshop for everything. Some lovely Ghost ships here.
Ken’s loves include the art of Gustav Klimt, Mike Mignola, Shaun Tan, Moebius, Zdzislaw Beksinski and James Jean. He listens to stuff like the Smashing Pumpkins (which has a huge influence on his work), Sparklehorse and various movie scores. Films he likes include The Life Aquatic, The Thin Red Line, Blade Runner, Children of Men, Leon, Porco Rosso, Lost in Translation and the original Star Wars trilogy. There’s also a darker and slightly eerie side to his work.
Other things Ken likes include retro game culture, traveling, urban decay, pasta, and avoiding his inbox lol (apparently). He’s worked on a game version of Alice in Wonderland, a Victorian Alice but not quite as we know her. She had some weird creatures to deal with too, as you can see below.
Some slightly friendlier cartoon versions of Super Mario Bros.
These illustrations show a mood piece for a racing game based on Chinese vehicles. The idea was to emphasize local, street level characters, cultures and vehicles. Great movement.
There’s posters for sale here on Thumbtackpress and an interview here.
Fishink . Running, (well walking) up that hill !
We had another great sunny interlude yesterday. To make the most of this I decided to stretch my legs, and take a different route walking up the road. There’s a flock of pigeons who live on the way, who spend a long time each day, circling in spiral formations around the tree tops and then suddenly, after 10 laps in one direction they’ll dart and change their path in an instant and the whole pack responds as one. It’s quite magical to watch, especially when the sun catches the white of their wings, like a flash in the sky.
Walking further on, there were times when the sun was in my face or behind trees and branches. Highlighting the moss on the boughs, making it look like a bright green strip light fastened to the edge of the tree. I like the effects you can get taking pictures into the sun, and this gnarled old hawthorn tree looks like it’s trying to twist itself out of the earth.
There were some lovely views and I liked the way the colours seemed to be divided by the walls and pathways.
Lots of chirpy blackbirds and darting finches as well as the usual dark observers, watching over me !
This photo reminded me of some early card ideas I’d done a few years ago.
More card ideas on my F I S H I N K website.
Sebastiaan Van Doninck describes himself as an Illustrative Illusionist, a kind of Houdini of the hand drawn world of imagery. A teacher and book illustrator alike, he conjures a magical world where sometimes sinister, yet captivating characters come to life.
Sebastiaan says ” 75% of the time I work digitally, ie with the laptop and tablet. But sometimes I hate that rotcomputer and I work by hand and create everything with paper and ink. But the mood to work with the computer, always comes back. On holiday I can work manually. Then I take great sketch books and work on landscapes. I do this every year. Spontaneously, I work directly and quickly. Hand work is a trend with other illustrators. The drawings are warmer, you have more contact with the materials and it feels natural. I am also a fan of heavy ink paint. Stains and marks I scan in colour, puzzle them together on the computer and so I often arrive with a collage, with minimal edits in Photoshop. ” (taken from Coffee Klatch)
His work for children’s books are occasionally a little on the edgy side, like Metro Monsters, again something UK publishers seems to steer away from. Perhaps Sebastiaan is creating books for the child inside the adult instead.
Some refreshingly creative work.
There are some great pieces and observations on his blog. Here’s where the artist in action resides !
Dorothea Renault was born in Germany and currently lives near Paris, where she studied advanced graphic and visual art.
After having started work as a freelance art director, she started to focus on illustration in 2000. Her interpretation of women has been shown in collaboration with clients like L’Oreal, Printemps, Burton, Nivea, Gemey-Maybelline, Bourjois, and Musée Galliera de la Mode in Paris.
I like the combination of the grey sketchy background drawing with the sharper, colourful figure or topic of focus in the foreground. With the agency Harrison-Wolf, she created a large illustration in 2006, which covered the whole building of the Société Générale headquarters in Paris. Recently, her illustrations decorated the windows of Printemps for the campaign “Young Married Couple”
Her work has triggers for me for both Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sex and the City , and the word sophistication comes through strongly.
Dorothea also responded to my question as to whether anyone knew any more about illustrator Joseph Pearson whom I’d blogged about recently. She had come across his work in another cook book belonging to her mum. She kindly sent me over some examples so that we can all enjoy them.
Many thanks Dorothea, keep up the great work and I’ll be featuring more of Joseph Pearson’s work from the Betty Crocker cook book soon.
Dan Mountford Seeing Double.
Graphic Design Student at Brighton University Dan Mountford has been developing a wonderful dreamlike collection of photographs.
Dan uses a combination of images to create double exposures, which are mostly fused together in the darkroom and with only the smallest of photoshop work later to add a spark of colour.
Inspirational work.
Penguin Books, Cover Art.
I was on Ebay the other evening, looking through this and that and I came across an entire series of King Penguin Books from between 1939 and 1959. I wasn’t interested in buying them, but their covers were wonderful and it got me thinking about the patterns and illustrations that were used by Penguin over the years.
Subjects ranged from Popular English Art, through to English Clocks and Flowers of Marsh and Stream. The series based on the much admired Insel books from Germany, were one half text and one half colour illustration. They were very much reference books but still pocket sized, if a little taller and wider than the Penguins and Pelicans that had gone before. They were launched in November 1939 and ran for the next twenty years.
More overall patterns could be found on Penguin’s Poetry books and Musical Scores. The poetry patterns were either cool and soft colours with a 1930’s /40’s feel, or bold and brash with a 1960’s vibe. Here’s a mix of both.
The music books, were produced from the late forties through to the late fifties, in a wide, pocket-sized paperback format. They had brief historical notes on the music and musicians, and represented a selection of works which would have been familiar to the general public during this period. I found these examples on Oliver Thomas’s page.
Many artists were producing endpapers for the inside of books too. Of course not all of them ended up being patterns. Can you spot the rather famous example of a picture story endpaper ?
I was fortunate to find a copy of ‘Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book’ in a second hand shop last week. My copy is a first edition, in it’s sixth printing and that was way back in 1961. Looking through it, I see how much the likes of ‘Madmen’ and ‘Pan Am’ have been influenced from the books of this era but also how much we’ve changed as a society, in the way that we interact with one another and in terms of what we now find attractive to eat. The stereotypical scene of the good housewife taking a steaming pot from the oven, with a big smile on her face, as her husband does his ‘honey I’m home’ bit, features throughout the book. Alongside pictures of strange dishes, (by today’s standards) of items like Ham Mouse, looking a little more like some space alien than enticing food for today’s table.
I loved these images of the Betty Crocker office with the Kitchens in ‘Golden Valley’, didn’t everything in the 1960’s just appear to be so perfect ! The book is actually a pretty amazing piece of culinary research, with over 450 pages and 1,850 recipes from kitchen know how to eggs, soups and vegetable ideas. There are some great paragraphs too, like this from the section entitled ‘Hints for the Homemaker’.
Be Comfortable
Wear comfortable shoes and easy fitting clothes while working. Stand erect. Good posture prevents fatigue. Have sink, work table, counter tops at height that is comfortable to eliminate strain. If dishpan is too low, set it on a box. Use a dust mop and long handled dust pan. Use self-wringing mop to prevent stooping.
Refresh Your Spirits
Every morning before breakfast, comb hair, apply makeup and a dash of cologne. Does wonders for your morale and your family’s too ! Think pleasant thoughts while working and a chore will become a ‘labour of love’. Have a hobby. Garden, paint pictures, look through magazines for home planning ideas, read a good book or attend club meetings. Be interested and you’ll always be interesting ! If you have a spare moment, sit down, close your eyes and just relax. (Priceless advice ! )
When I first picked up the book, I was instantly drawn to the illustrations by a talented guy called Joseph Pearson.
All the way through the book Joseph has included beautifully drawn characters and situations which have been added to cleverly illustrate each section. There must be over 100 of them.
I couldn’t discover much information about Joseph Pearson apart from the books he illustrated in a more watercolour style in the USA in the mid fifties called ‘The New People and Progress’. If anyone has any more info or knows or any other books he’s illustrated in this syle, I’d be interested to hear from you. In the meantime, I hope you like them too. On a different but connected note, if you haven’t seen the 2009 Mel Streep and Amy Adams film ‘Julie and Julia’, about the life of French Cook, Julia Child, then I would highly recommend it. A wonderful feel-good film created from two true stories, enjoy.
The Magic Garden , Wolverhampton. Foliage meet fantasy.
Last year I made a special journey to find The Magic Garden in Wolverhampton.
This idea is the brainchild of Bob Parker who together with his partner Greg Kowalczuk, created a place where you can escape into another world.
I had heard great things and wasn’t disappointed. Whether it involves stone gremlins, celtic forms, animals or just a rich abundance of beautiful plant life, you can find something to draw you in.
The Magic Garden is a long narrow high walled space that the guys have cleverly divided up into smaller spaces, which give the visitor the illusion that the garden goes on and on. It is also jam packed with plants, sculptures and such an array of goodies that you will be visually feasting as you wander through.
They take part in The National Gardens Scheme and open up their enchanted space to the public to raise money for charity. A couple of times a year they also open the garden in the evening, offering a magnificent array of lanterns and candlelit garden alleyways. At this event there are so many hundreds of lights to turn on and candles to burn that it can take 2-3 hours just to prepare the garden for the event !
Then just when you think it’s ended…. there’s more !!
To date the Magic Garden has raised over £32,000 for different charities. You can check out this years open dates here. The first one being April 28th 2012, it’s worth a visit . About £3 to get in, you can purchase some of Greg’s amazing home cooked cake as well and donate it all to a worthwhile charity … who can ask for more !
The Magic Garden, 43 Broad Lane, Bradmore, Wolverhampton, WV3 9BW, England.
Following on from the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair 2011 came an offer to take part in a Kitchen Garden exhibition in Bilston Craft Gallery. It’s been on since 18 Feb 12 and runs until the 28 Apr 12 so if you’re in the area pop in and see a range of designer makers work that is billed as a delightful range of handmade items that capture the British love of homemaking, cooking and gardening. You can download the KG Booklet here, for a full explanation of which artists have work on show. In case you’re wondering Bilston is 3 miles outside of Wolverhampton.
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