Emily Sutton at YSP

I was lucky enough to get to visit Emily Sutton's Town & Country exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park before it closed last week. Emily Sutton is a bit of a hero to me - the level of craftsmanship in her work is, in my opinion, among the highest of any illustrator working today. There is no flashy digital trickery or groundbreaking graphic design in the work she produces; it's all very much bread-and-butter illustration, but of the highest caliber. In a world, and an art form that is increasingly digitized, I find it very refreshing to see illustrators that still work entirely in analogue and truly master their discipline. Emily Sutton is an illustrator that really has learned by loving the very best, and I can see strong influences of Bawden and Ravillious in her work. A fantastic exhibition, and an incredible illustrator.

I especially love her alphabet series of screenprints, all jam packed with colour, fun, nostalgia and prsonality. 

Moomin power

I recently treated myself to a new book, written by Boel Westin, about the wonderful Tove Jansson. I'm a huge fan of Jansson's writing, art, and approach to life, and this was an excellent read. The book contains many, many snippets of various diary entries and letters written by Tove throughout her life, and it gave me a wonderful feeling of hope to recognize so many of my own thoughts and feelings in her musings about the world. To me, Tove Jansson was an artist in the very purest sense, a woman who instinctively realised the relationship between art, the natural world and daily life. Hugely inspirational. 

Jon Boam character design workshop

We were very lucky to have the incredibly talented (and softly-spoken) Jon Boam come in to the college to help Matt and Kris lead a masterclass on character development. I found it an enjoyable experience, but not without it's difficulties. Character design is not one of my strengths, and my own work is almost never character led.

One thing I noticed was that I found myself relying quite heavily on text and very explicit cues to contextualize a lot of my characters - this was a real weakness of a lot of the work I produced that day. I realize that I should be striving to create characters that are bold and stand alone, so that they do no require this. My lack of certainty/confidence in my ability to create characters was only emphasized by the fact that I fell back on writing.

Surprisingly (and a pleasant surprise, at that!), the part of the workshop that I enjoyed the most was working with pre-drawn solid shape, and having to build a character around that. I didn't expect to enjoy this process at all, purely because I don't like working with pure shape, but actually found it quite easy to  generate ideas about how to work character design into these solid masses. I was really glad about this, because it brought home to me the fact that (although I still have many MANY ups and downs) I am, at least starting, to think 'like an illustrator', in that I was managing to solve a problem.

What to take away from this experience:

• Something exciting and engaging can grow out of the simplest thing, or shape.
• Remember that it's okay to be silly sometimes. Silliness can be inspiring.
• The most successful character designs are the purest ones, the ones that can speak for themselves, and do not need lines of explanation. 

Big Heads: Matt Tayor

I wasn't aware of Matt's work before this Big Heads. Personally, his work doesn't strike a chord with me, however I did find him fascinating to listen to. He's incredibly professional and consistent in his output, and really treats his illustration work a serious job, something that pays the bills and puts food on the table. After the interview I head quite a few negative remarks about his being "commercial" or just "in it for money", and yeah, perhaps he is, but I found it very refreshing to hear a professional speak about this practice in a very professional manner.  It's very easy to get caught up in the airy-fairy making-pictures-just-for-the-love-of-making-pictures vibe, which is essential, but this can mean forgetting that this is still a professional practice. So yeah, great to hear someone speak without airs and graces about illustration as a job. Maybe we should all just cut the arty horseshit now and again.