I consider my main priority as an illustrator is to have a target audience of children. I find children’s innocence and creativity to be a major influence on how I go about my work as I’d love for it to be able to actively support their imaginations further. I consider illustration important for children because of their curiosity of the world as they develop their personality, I believe that illustration is an essential way to communicate, and educate, for all children about different lifestyles in a friendly manner. I find that the choice of colours and simplicity of the design of characters is a way of exploiting children’s curiosity to capture their attention, in order to communicate to them. By exhibiting illustrations aimed for children in a gallery space, it puts it into a different context. I feel that it’s a reminder to people that these illustrations are pieces of work that communicate in their own right and not just an image to support a piece of text in order to help children understand and read. It’s also a great way for illustrators to advertise themselves to the public for possible future commissions and to get their style and name recognised as a whole. That is why I’m looking into House of Illustration as a gallery space. House of Illustration is a charity that promotes new illustration talent and offers an illustration-led education programme. House of Illustration became a gallery space only in 2014, after being founded in 2002, and it is the first public gallery to do so for all forms of illustration in the UK. ‘… it is the place to see, learn about and enjoy illustration in all its forms; from advertisements to animation, picture books to political cartoons and scientific drawings to fashion design.’ House of Illustration (2014) This means that House of Illustration doesn’t concentrate solely on illustration for children, but it does contribute exhibiting children illustrations, considering it was founded by Sir Quentin Blake most famously known for his illustrations for children. I think that it’s wise for House of Illustration to openly accept all forms of illustration, and to be the first in the UK to do so, because it welcomes and celebrates all of the illustration community which helps every illustrator receive influence from others and to get their own work noticed. Speaking with House of Illustration’s Administrator Miss French, she tells me more about what House of Illustration contributes to the illustration community. ‘We do hold talks and masterclasses that bring in professional artists to share their knowledge with audiences. I suppose it's more about promoting the art of illustration here and its accessibility, in all its different forms (some people cannot think past children's books!). From this I get the impression that House of Illustration is about educating others that are interested in Illustration and what they can learn from other illustrators that work in a wide variety of mediums for different audiences. I visited House of Illustration whilst they had two exhibitions happening. Both of the illustrators of the exhibitions have created illustrations for a children audience. The first was Lauren Childs, well known for her work on Charlie & Lola, and the second was Ernest Shepard who’s known for his work on A.A Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh and Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows. My original thought was that House of Illustration were exhibiting two well-known illustrators which I felt contradicted their aims of promoting new illustration talent, however the exhibitions themselves were pleasantly different. Lauren Child’s Dolls House exhibition gave a new outlook to her approach to her illustrations. Seeing these diorama-type structures reminded me that showing a narrative isn’t always a 2D approach, but can be later converted to 2D, with 3D visual elements, when used for print. By putting her work into a gallery context in House of Illustration, we see further into the imagery as not just 2D illustrations on a page but as piece of artwork on its own. The EH Shepard: An Illustrator’s War exhibition was also a different take to what we usually see from his children illustrations. The images he produced had many different purposes whilst he was at war on the front lines. At this time Shepard was still a cartoonist for Punch magazine but as I went on through the exhibition, I could see his style develop from a cartoonist into a more illustrative style. He also producing personal works as well, such as illustrations of his wife that he sent to her through the post. Seeing this exhibition was a different outlook from the work I usually seen produced by Shepard. It taught me how he developed from his cartoon style to an illustrative one. I think that is what makes gallery exhibitions important for illustrations. As an exhibited collection, the gallery informs us on the behind-the-scenes that go into their illustrations, such as how the illustrators lives having an impact on their style and their ideas, just like what House of Illustration did with this certain exhibition. It makes us stop and analyse the details of the work in their own right. House of Illustration were also the first gallery space to exhibit this collection from Shepard also. I believe in a sense that it is still showing new illustration talent because it was a side of Shepard that hadn’t been explicitly exhibited before to the public. Although the time I visited House of Illustration it involved two known children illustrators, future events consist of illustrators and illustrations of a wide variety such as graphic novelists, life drawing classes, letterpress printing and more. I think by learning about these different sides to illustration from one gallery space, it helps other illustrators, such as myself, become influenced and motivated to combine their styles with something new and innovative which I think is what helps illustrators develop further into their practice. From the information that I have gathered about House of Illustration is that as a gallery space it promotes all forms of illustration, including children illustrations, but with a different outlook. I feel that this approach is what makes House of Illustration a perfect gallery space to learn about different styles and different illustrators, especially for newcomers into the illustration environment such as a student as myself. I believe that House of Illustration is important to educate everyone about how broad illustration can be, that it’s not as simple as an image in a book for a child to help learn to read, but much more than that. It is definitely somewhere I’d visit again and again to learn more about different illustrators in the industry, in order to develop my style and practice to become more suitable for the right target audience, and for me that is an audience of children.
I really enjoyed my visit to House of Illustration. It was the first time I visited there and thought that the two corresponding exhibitions taking place at that time were both so very different yet both were illustration. Lauren Child's exhibit consisted of 3D and collage methods to narrate her stories and EH Shepard: An Illustrators war exhibited his watercolour and pure line drawings. Both are completely different methods, time periods and narrative motives but are both considered Illustration which shows how broad illustration can be.
Working as a group, the decision to think that the Naomi V Jelish piece of work by Jamie Shovlin was illustration or not based on our research concluded yes. Only the commercial side of placing the artwork in an art space created this illusion of a factious piece of documentation when in reality it's similar to storyboarding a fictional character's life. Either side to it, it's still narrating a character's life and narrative motive was what depicted this piece of work as illustration for us.
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