Calling all illustrators – an illustration collaboration!
The ‘Drawing Words’ exhibition currently showing at Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle, highlights exciting contemporary children’s book illustrations.
Earlier posts in this blog have highlighted this exhibition, including a recent talk given by Lauren Child, who has curated this exhibition. The exhibition runs until February, so there is plenty of time for you to head over to Newcastle and explore the exhibition and other delights on offer at Seven Stories.
Suzie Williams, our Academic Liaison Librarian for our arts, design and performing arts programmes, and Julia Patton, lecturer in Illustration at Sunderland went to a recent ‘In Conversation’ event with Lauren, and they have co-authoroed this blog post.
Lauren is a previous winner the Kate Greenaway medal for children’s book illustration, and is organised by CILIP, the UK’s Library and Information Association. When Suzie asked how winning the award had affected her, Lauren proclaimed that it was life-changing – it gave her the oxygen she needed at the start of her career.
One of the exhibition collaborators illustrator Jill Calder was present at the exhibition – one of the photos here shows her next to her illustration excerpts from ‘Robert The Bruce’. Jill is an award winning illustrator and calligrapher who loves drawing, ideas, colour, ink, typography, stories, books, dogs and deadlines. She blends traditional and digital image-making methods as seamlessly as possible resulting in whimsical illustrations with broad appeal. As a result, her work is commissioned for children’s picture books, huge hospital murals, financial and scientific reports, branding Scotch whisky and global advertising campaigns. Jill holds an active role in the Society Of Children’s Books Writers And Illustrators.
The other photo in this post shows a group of authors and illustrators who attended the talk by Lauren Child. From left to right – Sara Oglvie (an author and illustrator), Jill Calder, Zoe Waring (author and illustrator), Holly Sterling (author, illustrator and illustration lecturer), Lauren Child (former Children’s Laureate, Drawing Words curator, author and illustrator), Julia Patton (author, illustrator and illustration lecturer) and Chris Chatterton (author and illustrator). More photographic highlights from the evening can be found here on Julia’s Twitter account.
