Seven Stories have been happy to be involved in a brand new event around illustration in the North East - the Hartlepool Festival of Illustration.
Working with the festival organisers, we loaned several pieces of artwork from the Seven Stories Collection to an exhibition held at Hartlepool Art Gallery. Artwork from the below has all been on display alongside additional loaned works from Chris Riddell, Sara Ogilvie and John McCrea, amongst others.
- Edward Ardizzone
- Shirley Hughes
- Polly Dunbar
- Sarah Garland
- Angela Barrett
- Helen Craig
- John Burningham
As part of the festival, we have also been out on a whirlwind tour of the local area, working with an amazing 730 participants over 10 days. The sessions took place in nine primary schools, one college of further education and in Hartlepool Art Gallery itself. Lynn hosted a spectacular 29 illustration workshops over this time - and is now on a well deserved holiday! This is what she has to say about the experience:
Having
completed a two week residency in Hartlepool schools, I feel very privileged to
have been involved with such an exciting outreach programme, using original
materials from the Seven Stories Collection to help inspire the next generation
of illustrators and designers.
Knowing that
the exhibition would include materials to illustrate the creative processes in the making of a picture book, I was very keen to develop a primary
workshop using illustrator Sarah Garland’s sketchbooks, and Polly Dunbar’s sketches and
finished artwork for My Dad’s a Birdman, written by David Almond.
Based in a
new school each day, I arrived each morning with 90 sketchbooks, HB pencils,
graphite sticks and a gross of felt tip pens. Needless to say these were put to
great use, the children hugely excited to have their own sketchbook and
pencils, all kindly provided by Cleveland College of Art and Design. The
workshops were planned to last between 75-90 minutes. Most
followed a similar format with variations depending on the age and maturity of
the pupils.
Of courser it wouldn’t be a Seven Stories workshop if it
there wasn't any book chat! We talked
about the children’s favourite storybooks, the authors and illustrators they
knew and liked. We browsed picture books selection to look at style. Children
talked about why they liked the illustrations and considered where authors and
illustrators get their ideas from.
I wanted the
children to experience quick sketching, and told them:
“We are
going to look, talk, listen, draw, draw, draw again, draw some more, more
talking, more drawing, more looking, talking, listening and if there is
sufficient time, even more drawing!”
We looked at
some facsimiles of artwork in the exhibition. They saw how illustrators use
sketchbooks, sometimes drawing multiple images on one page. Sarah Garland’s quick sketches of families in
the swimming pool show how little information is needed in a sketch for it to
work as a preparatory drawing. They noticed how Polly Dunbar uses just a dot
for an eye or a line for the mouth in her Birdman sketches. They
considered how an illustrator develops a character from an initial sketch. From
the slumped posture in the sketch of Lizzie’s dad, they started to understood
how an illustrator can portray a character’s emotions in the pose or facial
expression. We looked at Angela Barratt’s graphite sketch and finished drawing
for The Snow Queen, and Helen Craig’s artwork for Angelina Ballerina.
An
illustration workshop needs drawing time! We started
drawing birds.
“How many
different birds can you draw in a minute?”
We drew
more, changing the size of beaks and wings to see how that affected the
drawing. We handled feathers and a selection of soft toy birds. Talking
about their achievements at the end of the sessions, many highlighted using
graphite sticks to draw their real and imagined feathers as a favourite part.
Graphite can be used for clean sharp lines or blended and smudged to create
featheriness. It was a new medium for most of the young artists.
 |
| Examples of the students work |
Next:
drawing a human. I
wanted the children to try drawing a simple human character, with not too much detail, as we would use our
experience of drawing feathers and birds to transform our character. There was a real buzz throughout the entire
workshops. I read extracts from My Dad's a Birdman or retold parts while the children
were busy drawing.
Throughout
the workshops children proudly showed back their work to each other and talked
about their achievements. Every child participated. No one once said that they "couldn’t" or "didn’t" know how to draw a bird, feather or human. They were working
as illustrators.
Next step
storyboarding. We compared
different approaches to storyboarding. I had included some additional
storyboard facsimiles from the original Picture Book in Progress exhibition, held at Seven Stories visitor centre in 2014.
The groups compared these with John Burningham’s storyboard which features in the
Festival exhibition. Children pointed
out that some of the frames have very little detail, yet the sketches of
animals are drawn in greater detail.
We were able
to see how Sarah Garland’s storyboard for Doing Christmas was roughly
sketched on lined A4 paper, how Judith Kerr used very faint drawings in her
storyboards for Mog the Forgetful Cat and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. In contrast, Helen Cooper’s
storyboard for Little Monster Did It includes everything she wants on the
page including minute text. I heard
“wow” almost every time someone looked closely at this one. There is no
right or wrong way in developing a storyboard - illustrators use them as they
need.
Everyone had
created a new character so the next stage was to think of what
happened to them. Everyone
had a go at storyboarding 3 frames to show the participation: Frame 1 getting
ready to start. Frame 2 character mid flight, to show the shape they make in
the air.
Frame 3
Success? Failure? Cheers or splash?
In the
extended workshops children then worked for some time developing one of their
storyboard frames into an actual illustration. In her finished artwork, Polly
Dunbar portrays dad and Lizzie tumbling
through the air wearing their beaks and feathers. Many of the participants
worked on their own version of this scene.
On the
second last day of the residency I led the illustration workshops in the Art
Gallery surrounded by world class illustration.
I adapted the session for working with the older B Tech Students from
East Durham College to include David Almond’s initial character notes for his
Birdman, asking them to try to think along these lines when developing their
own characters. They considered
appearance, their character’s fears and desires. Would they have a special
object? Several students annotated their drawings, finding this a useful way to
develop ideas.
In addition
to exploring the creative process through the original materials from the exhibition, the students were able to compare how different
illustrators respond to the same subject, and compared Ralph Steadman’s
illustration from Treasure Island with Chris Mould’s interpretation of the same
scene.
On display,
next to our workspace were several illustrations from Chris Riddell’s Ottoline
books. Chris had been named as the ninth
Children’s Laureate days earlier. In his five point plan he includes the joy of
sketchbooks and celebration of reading for pleasure. I talked about this with
the groups and how Chris had been one of the key speakers at the festival
launch.
We were
doing just what he was suggesting, doodling with our birds and feathers and
enjoying drawing in a beautiful sketchbook.
The feedback has been very positive with children reflecting
on what they had learnt or enjoyed, including finding out how much works goes
into the making of a picturebook. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. When asked
to reflect on something they had learnt as a result of the workshops, one 8
year old boy wrote:
“ I learnt I
could draw!”
Lynn Telford
The Picture
Book in Progress Illustration workshops were part of the Hartlepool Festival of
Illustration, a partnership between Cleveland College of Art and Design,
Hartlepool Borough Council and Seven Stories.
