
On Saturday, I took myself off to Manchester for the day, to meet up with some other illustrator friends and attend a lecture by children's book illustrator John Lawrence, part of the Manchester Literary Festival.

Many people may recognise John's illustrations from the spin-offs to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. To my shame, I didn't previously know his beautiful work. It was Cassia Thomas who suggested the outing, as John was one of her tutors on her Masters course.

The poor man was obviously very, very nervous, but it was a joy to be led on a journey through his wood and vinyl-cut illustrations. I had no idea that a modest, A4 size woodblock could cost £500! I think I'd find that stultifying, as I'd be terrified of making mistakes.

There was a lovely exhibition of children's book illustration alongside the lecture hall too, themed around subject matter. There were a lot of old favourites, plus some new discoveries. The only disappointment was that the illustrators themselves were not named!

The other main activities of our day-out were eating, gassing, shopping and getting lost, by repeatedly walking in completely the wrong direction.

As usual, as you can see, I managed to bag a few train-drawings on my way there and back. I was very lucky on the return journey to have not only this elderly lady opposite me, but a monk sitting just down the aisle.

I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't get his white robes in and the rosary hanging from his belt!
I love your sketches of people on trains - you catch the individuality so well and they aren't prettified. The one of the monk is really monkish.
ReplyDeleteA monk ! On your train home ! That was a heaven-sent opportunity ( no pun intended ) I would have sketched myself into a frenzy.
ReplyDeleteGreat sketches.
oh oh oh!
ReplyDeleteYour blog, is rather splendid!
Thank-you for playing show and tell with all your pretty thoughts and pictures!
x x x
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, for some reason more recent comments seem to be taking a while to show here on the blog: I'm sure it's a glitch and they'll appear in time...
Oh - and there they are!
ReplyDelete