Brian Wildsmith

Another fantastic illustrator that I've been looking at recently is Brian Wildsmith, he is a childrens book illustrator. I love his use of colour and the soft way that he applies it to create dream like worlds and creatures. His animals and characters all have a really distinct style that is simple but full of life. Here are a few screen shots of his work:



All images are screenshots from Brian Wildsmiths website: http://www.brianwildsmith.com

Eric Carle

Recently I've been looking at Eric Carle's childrens books for some inspiration for my own illustrations. He's most famous for 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' but he has so many other beautiful books as well. I really love the methods that he uses to create his vibrant imagery as they're so hands on and basic but they produce really striking images that have a lot of character. The textures that he creates with the painted papers are really amazing and add so much depth to the simple shapes that make up the characters.

Some of my faves are below:



All images are from the Eric Carle Museum: http://www.carlemuseum.org

Charles Keeping

Last weekend I visited Whitby and after poking around in a few charity shops I found a copy of Dragon Slayer The Story of Beowolf by Rosemary Sutcliff which is illustrated by Charles Keeping. Keeping is one of my favourite illustrators, his use of line to create drama and expression is something which really inspires me. There aren't a huge amount of illustrations in the book but it's still exciting to see work by Charles Keeping that I haven't seen before. I really love the colour on the front cover, the colours are so vibrant and add to the drama of the line drawings. This was a great little find for me!

NEW WORK

Website update!

I just added 2 new projects to my website;

'The Outsider' - the illustrations that I created in response to the novel 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus

plus an animation that I made for Waggledancer and WD40 last week.

Take a peek at both: http://www.emmabrownowl.com

The Illusionist

Last weekend I went to see The Illusionist at the Cornerhouse; I was reallly excited about this film by French director Sylvain Chomet as I am a big fan of his previous film Belleville Rendezvous. The Illusionist was completely different to the first film; it had a very melancholy feel to it and had more of a serious edge to it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful, the animation was perfect; the exaggerated characters and the soft palette of colours worked so well to create something that was charming and just lovely. It was so good to see hand drawn animation that had real character to it rather than digitally produced characters that are perfect and hollow. It gave me some hope for my own career and style of work which has so many handmade elements.

Screen capture from Pathe International.

Tatton Park Biennial

Last weekend I went to Tatton park for the 2010 biennial which was an absolute treat. There were about 25 pieces spread out across the gardens and house; it was so exciting to see the pieces so out of context, it was really strange to see contemporary installations and sculptures inside a stately home or elaborate garden and that really added charm to the exhibition. My favourite piece by far was the feather sculpture/installation 'Evacuate' by Kate MccGwire which was a huge piece spilling out of a range, made of feathers of birds that would have once been cooked on the giant stove.

Picture taken from www.tattonparkbiennial.org

I also loved Marcia Farquhar's giant rocking horse sculpture:


Jem Finer's 'Spiegelei' a giant silver ball on top of a wooden shed which was actually a camera obscura projecting the upside-down shadow of the Japanese gardens around the inside of the ball.

and Helen Marten's 'Coveting Keratin' and 'Milk on white', a huge truncated sculpture of a lion and a billboard.

photo also taken from www.tattonparkbiennial.org

A lot of the pieces had links and themes relating back to Lord Egerton and his family, the last of the Egerton family who owned Tatton Hall. I was really impressed by the range of pieces and the intriguing layout of the exhibition.

The Surreal House

This week I went to London to visit ContainerPlus (post to come on illustration blog) while I was in London with my mum we decided to visit the Surreal House exhibition at the Barbican. I've never been to the Barbican before and I was quite surprised by the area and the building itself as they were all pretty ugly, very 1970s, tall blocks of flats. However the inside of the Barbican was lovely and there was a giant courtyard with fountains/lots of water and giant reeds and plants which would be a great thing to look out onto!

The exhibition itself was fantastic, there were so many pieces by artists that I've been looking at or influenced by during my final year so it was quite a thrill to see the pieces up close, in particular the boxes by Joseph Cornell and a small sample of his collection of photographs and images etc which made up his extensive studio. I managed to watch the whole of Jan Swankmajer's 'The Jabberwocky' which was fascinating, I had only seen a fraction of it when I'd researched him in the past and the full film is amazing, there is so much detail, I was in awe of it all. I also watched a film by Maya Deren called 'Meshes of the Afternoon' which was really unusual but very enjoyable following a sort of surrealist dream of a woman repeating the same action of entering her home after chasing a mirror-faced figure, each time she looked around her home objects had moved or were changing in front of her eyes. Some of my favourite pieces were ceramic sculptures by Rachel Kneebone which were a mass of objects and figures all merged into 1 glossy white web, they were so detailed and beautiful I would have liked longer to have studied them properly as there was so much to see.

Rachel Kneebone sculpture 'In the midst of quietness, branched thoughts murmur' image from theindenpendent.co.uk



Jan Swankmajer 'The Jabberwocky' from youtube