Images 36: Best of British Illustration 2012

A couple of snaps of my picture 'Aquacat' in Images 36: Best of British Illustration 2012. This is the book produced to showcase selected entries to the Association of Illustrators' annual competition.

A great evening was had at the book launch & opening night of the accompanying exhibition, at Somerset House, the impressive new home of the AOI. 

The book, complete with stylishly minimal slipcase, is available to buy now, and the exhibition is enjoying its last couple of days. (I'm not in the exhibition, by the way, but it's well worth a visit this weekend.)

Fantastic to see my work printed in here! 

Next year's edition of the competition is being revamped in as-yet unannounced way- it'll be very interesting to see where they take it.

Many congratulations to all of this year's winners

Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Exhibition

Went back down for a proper look at the Self Portrait exhibition down at Kings Place Gallery (next to Kings Cross, the building in which the Guardian and Observer are based). The show fills the huge lower floors of Kings Place, as well as the actual gallery itself. There are some cracking portraits on show, although I felt the exhibition was a little bloated at 170-odd paintings- half of that would probably be more comfortable.


The exhibition is on every day until the 25th November. And congrats to the winner of the competition, Celia Paul.


My portrait: I think the wonky board looks alright in the end:

Some of my favourite portraits from the show (links at the bottom):


Tony Noble's Self Portrait, Red Brick Mill Studio, a brilliant acrylic piece:

Andrew Whamond's frank and expressive Self Portrait Standing:

Gilly Lovegrove, Untitled:

I saw an Alison Lambert solo exhibition in Soho a few years ago. She produces stunning large-scale portraits in charcoal, pastel and layers of torn paper, giving the pieces a deep relief and wonderfully sculptural topography. It's like the portrait has actually come from within the paper. Fantastic draughtsmanship (draughtswomanship?) too. Really worth seeing in person. Self-Portrait:

 Sheena Russell's Red Portrait:

Artist links:

Tony Noble

Andrew Whamond

Gilly Lovegrove

   Alison Lambert

   Sheena Russell

Private View Illustration Agency

Myself and my pictures are now represented by Private View Illustration Agency. They have some super-good artists on their books and I'm very excited to be alongside them.

Have a peek at www.pvuk.com

(Though my entry on the site is in a pre-formatted state at present)

I'd also recommend that you avoid reading my embarrassing self-penned biography!

Very happy!

Also, I received a nice email to say that my piece from the London Transport Museum is among 12 pieces from the exhibition chosen to be displayed at the Serco head office for the next 5 weeks or so. 

I hope everyone is well!

The Serco Prize Exhibition at London Transport Museum

The best 50 entries from the AOI's annual Serco Prize competition are currently exhibited at the London Transport Museum. I went back to show my Dad around a few days after the PV, and took my camera this time.

My entry:

There were some great responses to the 'River Thames' brief. A big favourite for me was Melvyn Evans' Thames People and Tides- brilliantly characterful tiny figures and an exquisite colour palette:

Ace characters in Matt Oxborrow's piece...

...one of whom bore a striking resemblance to my guest to the private view, www.benstrachan.co.uk:

Great textures and beautifully observed figures in Holly Stoves' image:

Congrats to the winners. The exhibition is on until the 3rd June, in case you'd like to take a peek. The museum itself has some interesting stuff too, like this chap:

Serco Prize for Illustration Exhibition

My entry for the AOI & London Transport Museum competition (HERE) has been selected to appear in the Serco Prize for Illustration exhibition next month. I've seen a couple of the other chosen pieces and it looks like the exhibition is going to be great!


I'm really looking forward to this, off to pick up my print tomorrow.


The exhibition runs from the 10th May- 3rd June at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, so be sure to pop over and check it out yeah.

Thames Poster

I did this for that London Transport Museum/ AOI competition- a poster for the Thames. This is based on the under-appreciated stretch of the river beyond the Thames Barrier. The image is based on my sketchbook scrawls from a morning visit. Going to give it a couple more hours' loving soon I think.

Comp

My Rocky comic entry was one of the 16 to make it into the mini-digi edition of Little White Lies, which is here. Pretty chuffed with that, particularly as there were some really good and witty entries. Have a look!

6 Panels

The results of the Little White Lies Kick Ass comic competition came out the other day. The winner is a real stunner, take a look. The winner and 2 runners-up (not me) have been announced on the Creative Review site, a long with a few other favourites. Mine can be seen along with a few more on the Bleeding Cool comic blog (I found this through Andrew Waugh's blog, so thanks for that), which has run a feature on the competition. So I'm crossing my fingers I might still sneak into the selection published in the mag's digital edition, out on friday.

There were some really stunning entries, I've got to say, and a lot of different approaches. Go and spend a while checking 'em out!

Rose

I did this for a book cover design competition run by Venus Febriculosa. My design is inspired by gothic architecture and scholasticist philosophy, which lies at the heart of Eco's novel. I think I could've done something nice with the concept with a bit of time to fiddle and try things out, but it was a major rush-job again really.

But I guess it was useful to use Illustrator a bit for once, and I hadn't done anything design-related for ages. And one of the things I really love about this whole 'Illustration' idea is getting to learn about new things: I learnt a lot about medieval architecture, churches, 1300's philosophy and Italian Gothic while researching this.

Yo Adrienne!

Been busying myself with a couple of competitions. This is another one run by Little White Lies Magazine to portray one's favourite film within a black & white six-panel comic strip template, the idea being that someone who's never seen the film could interpret the full story by reading this comic. Tricky. I chose the mighty Rocky. I tried to show the central events and scenes while also communicating the tone and overall message of the film, and also to allude to it's supporting characters and motifs without distracting from the main story.

A bit of a rush in the end, but I enjoyed this loads. Quite a departure from what I usually do, but I learned a lot of stuff that's definitely feeding into my more everyday work already.

Competition

The picture I posted a while back was chosen as one of the winners of Little White Lies magazine's Where The Wild Things Are competition, and can be seen in issue 26 of the magazine. I didn't win overall, but I'm not too bitter because I actually like the winning design quite a lot. Incidentally, the cover actually commissioned for the magazine is considerably weaker than most of the competition ones, I would say.

Those winning entries, along with a few others, can also be seen on the website.