It's that time of the year again when the great and good in British Illustration pop up in the A.O.I's 'IMAGES' annual. Judgement on number 36 is out soon, while IMAGES 35 recently had it's private view in London, where the various awards in different categories were dished out. Work to appear in the annual is jury selected, so not every Tom Dick and Harry can get in, and subsequently the standard is always high.
Well we are happy here at team FMI to say that we have had not just one, nor two, but three people manage to get into the hefty tome. And if that wasn't enough, some of them even got a number of illustrations into it.
Published late Spring 2011 – I’m very excited to have contributed to Puffin’s Classics series with a cover illustration.
It’s different having to illustrate a scene (namely the opening graveyard scene in which the convict Magwitch confronts the terrified Pip) which is so well known in people’s minds. But the trick, I soon found, is to forget all that and just draw what they ask, as usual.
This is a working version of a cover for a new book for Random House, plus a rough for one of the interior pages.
The story features a destitute young girl – downtrodden, beaten, neglected, but surely destined for greater things – and further convinces me I’m carving my little niche in depicting such pathos-inducing characters. I rejoice that there’s always plenty of room for more pathos in this game.
Just imagine: it’s still early in Queen Victoria’s reign; you’re a young northern girl of respectable stock; you’re stuck on a strange ship bound for Australia with typical Victorian upper-middle class parents; and you miss your Gran. What should a posh girl do other than steal down to steerage and check out the lad with the rat in his waistcoat? Only then do you get passed the baby to hold and you wonder if crossing the white line into the world beneath ‘First Class’ was the brightest move you ever made. Illustration ‘Emily holds Annie’ for Emily’s Surprising Voyage, commissioned by Jacky Paynter of Walker Books and due to be published later this year.
Here are some working drawings for another trio of Gladiator Boy editions (13-15), written by David Grimstone. Decimus and his beleaguered friends just can’t leave evil to do its thing, as they embark on another hideously dangerous journey, battling blood imbibed doppelgangers, effete psychopaths, ogrish subterraneans and an amputee who doesn’t let what’s lacking get in the way of a violent streak wider than the Tiber. These are currently due for release 1st July 2010.