Frances McKay Illustration

Images 35

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.

Meerkat Smiles, (I hope!)

 
Recently I have been very happily sketching meerkats, for a possible new project!!

Frances rang me up one day to ask, “How do you feel about drawing meerkats?” I answered, “Well, I’d definitely like to give it a go!” Especially as we are members of a small local zoo in East Sussex, that is particularly known for its meerkat family, and a its meerkat viewing dome, where my girls love to pop their heads through, to become part of the meerkat surroundings!

Ben's Box

Ben’s Box’ is a book I have been working on with Frances. It focuses on a little bear named Ben who just wants to play. He spends his day trying to catch Florence, a bird who is hiding in his box. She flies out and he tries to follow her. Its text consists of mostly onamaterpiac words which are simply joyous. There’s not much else to be said about this lovely little story really. All I need do now is make sure all the drawings are as strong as they can be!

Happy Easter!

 
This illustration by Jane Eccles recently featured on Illustration Rally's Easter Rally.

Happy Easter from all of us!

 

 

St Valentine

  
Spring is coming, love is near.

The First Snowfall

 
Lilly was dressing up warm. It was the first day of the Christmas Holiday and Jack Frost had been about. He had left no footprints on the new carpet of snow that covered the ground. But each window pane had frosted to his touch, and the wind seemed keen to rush indoors; you can always tell when Jack Frost has been about.

Apes

 
Here is one, of a few, small illustrations I worked on recently. Four weeks ago I was asked to produce a small portfolio for a potential client in France. As usual, when I had a look on the publishers website, I got nervous of my old illustrations. Would they be good enough to present? So I decided to do a few quick illustrations, which I could add to the older ones.

At the moment I am working at an cover-artwork for Oetinger Verlag Hamburg. I`m right at the beginning, thinking about the story and the different ways to design the cover and type. I feel like a cat surrounding the mouse. Already fulfilled with joy of what will come up, afraid of being unable to draw something that I will really like, that it is representable, and worth printing. As soon as I have something to show, I will share it with you.

Christina

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Fairy Tale Village

During summer I spent a week in Sarmede, a tiny village in the Venetian hills in Italy. Quite unexpectedly given its small size and isolated location, Sarmede hosts an international school of illustration and a yearly exhibition featuring works by some of the most exciting contemporary children’s book illustrators.

The school was founded in 1989 by Czech artist Stepan Zavrel, whose beautiful frescos are still dotted around the village (together with the anecdotes about his rocambolesque life).

In Sarmede I attended a course taught by Linda Wolfsgruber (a great teacher as well an inspiring illustrator) and I had fun experimenting with monoprint.

By using a sheet of Perspex, oil based colours, and a press, monoprint allows you to create interesting textured backgrounds. If you don’t have access to a press though, a rolling pin will do the trick.

Back to my studio I cut and pasted the backgrounds I had produced in the course. And here is what came up…

Valentina Cavallini

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