Picture hooks talk 4

Today I attended the fourth picture hooks talk held at the Scottish National Gallery. The speakers were Nick Sharratt (mentor) and Maisie Shearring. They both presented their work and discussed their histories and paths into illustration.
Nick Sharratt has been illustrating for over 30 years, during the early part of his career he mostly worked on editorial illustrations for several years before becoming a book illustrator. Probably most well known for his work with author Jacqueline Wilson. He has become a renowned artist within the industry and regularly does workshops and events for children. The interesting part of his talk was his reference to how Maisie has actually inspired him. This was largely due her methods of working which relies heavily on observational drawing, often done in a very spontaneous manner. This is something he feels he may have lost himself due to heavy workloads and working within the studio so much of the time.
Maisie explained how she studied a foundation course in Hull, then moved to Edinburgh to study a BA in illustration before moving to Cambridge to do the MA in children's book illustration. During this time she had entered five images into the Bologna book fair competition and won. The prize included a sum of money and a publishing deal with a publisher who has a tie with the book fair. This is also great exposure for Maisie and will most likely lead to other work as this book will be released at this years fair. I will look out for this myself when I attend the event in April. Maisie works in a way unlike any other artist I have met, as shown through her observational drawings. When she draws characters in her sketchbook they all seem to be around an inch in height. Starting with blocks of colours and the filling in details and line work, these images are then enlarged digitally to create the final images. These means her work has a very playful almost childlike appeal to it, I can see how this works especially for young children's books.
It was interesting for me to have chat with Maisie after the event, we discussed the course in Cambridge as I told her my interest. She explained about the focus on observational drawing and that works are continually critiqued which is something I have been used to both through college and university. She also stated that she did feel uneasy sometimes with trying to work to almost formula like ways of working as the course is very industry based. I explained that I would prefer to do the course part time so as to allow me to work and earn enough to stay in Cambridge, but more importantly to find my own voice and spend more time on the various modules and hopefully enjoy the course more that way. Maisie agreed this the was probably the best option as she did feel that full time was rather intense. After discussing what I enjoy and what I thought the course might be like Maisie seemed to think that I would really enjoy the MA and that my attitude towards things would suit the course itself. This was reassuring as was the fact that the Bologna competition she won is the same thing I entered this year. Although my purpose was not to try and win, my only intention was to gain free tickets to the event itself to see what it is all about. However this does show that I am on the right track with trying to make it into this industry as I am becoming aware of important events, people and gaining a better understanding of the publishing world. I hope that I should hear about tickets to Bologna soon as I do know that my illustrations must have made it on time as my name is on the list as shown below along with last years winning images from Maisie.