Extra research

Oliver Jeffers – Here we are.

Notes for living on planet earth.

A gorgeous book about humans and the earth, suitable for 3+ readers baby and 5+ toddlers, ecological and environmental interest style of book.

A bit of a manual to life for children, it has a concept of kindness, tolerance and environmental responsibility, as well as knowing you are never alone.

I loved this particular illustration, I love the full page spread, the amount of detail that it has, yet it creates a sense of space too. I like how it includes sea, city, roads, trains, apartments (homes) and sky, all walks of busy lives. I like the composition and that it isn’t perfect and some of the illustrations are simple and the sky is peach in colour.

I’ve got the book ‘How to catch a start’ by Oliver Jeffers and have heard about ‘Crayons’ by him too, but I hadn’t read much about ‘Here we are’ and after looking into it for this research, I loved the concept and am hoping to get my own copy soon, as it would be a great addition to my collection.

Jon McNaught – Kingdom

I had not heard of Kingdom until my tutor suggested it to me, although I had done a section on graphic novels in one of my other units this was a surprise for me. I loved the concept behind the book/ magazine and the graphic illustrations are great, I love the limited two tone colour palette and the print like qualities of the illustrations, they are bold yet clear and crisp, very graphic with a 1950’s retro element to them. I like the idea that there are not many words in the book, it is mainly pictures and that it creates a sense of time and place and nostalgia of holidays long ago, when you was a child and time was endless.

Emma Carlisle – What you see when you look at a tree.

I’ve researched Emma Carlisle before in previous units of this degree and really liked her illustration style, but it was more of her landscape work I had been looking at. I liked the idea of this book and thought it fitted in with my ideas and concepts of books, I am glad these are being published to help sustainability.
It’s a great book for children to explore nature and slow down and see what’s around them and really look closely at nature. I enjoyed the rich colours and the whimsical textures that gave it a hazy feel to the illustrations. A great book to read along with children so you can point out the names of the trees and differences between them.

Kabloom

Trying to bring back nature into urban spaces, Kabloom went on a mission in the early 2000, selling eco friendly products that bring burst of colour and life in to their worlds. The seed bomb was created as a wildflower grenade, so even small spaces could benefit from nature and all living things. the seed bombs are now stocked and sold in over 950 stores which include Kew Gardens the eden project and the National History Museum, to name a few.

Kabooms next mission is to buy land so they can use the space to sew more wildflowers and set up re-wilding projects across the UK, restoring forests, meadows and natural habitats for animals and wildlife.

My Garden

I have just moved house and have a bigger garden than I have ever had, although not huge it is bigger than the average size in the UK. I have set about planting trees, I have two apple trees and a magnolia tree so far, plus two existing native trees in the garden. I have set up a wildflower bed for this year, but will hopefully have a small meadow of wild flowers next year once I have a new shed in place. I have also set up 5 raised beds for a cutting garden to grow my own flowers in.

I am looking forward to seeing how the wildflower bed takes shape and what I can learn ready for next year when I increase the size and space for it.

There is hopefully poppies, cornflowers, Californian poppies, A jewel wildflower seed mix, plus some Linaria in here.

Kate Rolfe

I researched some information about Kate Rolfe and looked at her work as suggested by my tutor. I liked the idea the art work where she has used a print stamp style illustration, mainly this was letters and numbers which were for the book ‘Wiggling words’, the rough texture and faint print areas are really great it gives a lot of character to the style of design she has created.

I really enjoyed the book ‘Wolf and bear’ I liked the simplicity of the illustrations and also the limited colour palette. There are small details within the illustrations but mainly it focuses on the two characters, I also liked the two sides of the pages, the dull blue colours then the rainbow bright colours the other side, it really helped the book to show emotions too.

All of her illustrations have some kind of texture to them be it printed, stencilled or a watercolour painterly effect, I really enjoyed looking at her art work and also some of the characters designs are brilliant too.

Kate works in print making with sunlight or as it’s called Cyanotype, as well as mixed media art. Kate tells stories that are important and can help people, like Wigling words which is about Dyslexia.

Bioluminescence – Jennifer Smith

The book Glow by Jennifer Smith is a great book which tells the readers about animals that glow up themselves. Jennifer is an illustrator and scientist and author of children’s books, she is an award winning author and illustrator for the books Bang and Glow. Books about biodiversity and creatures that team up and help each other out, gorgeous illustrations that bring nature to life, and in some books have a luminescent ink printed onto it to show how the creatures illuminate themselves in the wild.

A great book for children to help them learn about environmental issues and ways we can help nature and the natural world and save our planet and the animals on it by actions we can take together.

Stef Murphy

I was told about Stef Murphy by my tutor, and wanted to explore more about her and her illustration work, I was looking forward some inspiration on how to promote characters designs through my social media and how to do that. I looked at Stef’s website and also her Instagram page to see how she puts her work onto those platforms, and how this showcases her work to others.
I found some character illustrations on her website under book illustrations, I particularly liked these ones below:-

I was surprised at how simple some of them were, the top one is just two characters and does not even included all of the body of the dragons. Others are more detailed and seem to be either 1/2 page spreads or full page spreads taken from her books. I think the main thing I have taken away is the characters are really cute, have good facial expressions, are clear and they all have some form of texture in them.
I then went on to look at her Instagram page, a lot of her work from her website is on her Instagram, but there where a few different pieces, some sketches and some personal work.

A lot of the work on her Instagram was of her books, mainly spreads, front covers and promotions of them, but there were character designs, sketch book work and some personal work.
I think the main thing to take away was that the character designs had the most engagement, along side the book covers. But having some sketchbook work and personal work on there can make it more natural and showcases all the aspects and processes she goes through when illustrating.

The Eden project

I have never been to the Eden project, but have heard a lot about it and I remember when it launched and opened. The furthest I been have is to Devon down that way and that was when I was a child and before the Eden project opened. I have looked at the website to see what type of things they do there and what customers can do, learn and take part in.
It seems you can either do lots of things, activities and get immersed into the project, or you can just go for a calm, gentle time immersed in nature and get something it out of it that way.

There is a Rainforest Biome, which is a huge indoor rainforest, with plants, trees and botanicals from Asia, west Africa and South America.

There is a Mediterranean Biome which again is a huge indoor plant, tree and botanicals from Asia feast, with sights and scents from California, western Australia and the Mediterranean.

There are outdoor gardens, with play areas, walks, exhibits as well as the seasonal borders, plants, trees and outside park land and seating areas.

There is also an Invisible worlds permanent exhibition that shows you worlds that we cannot see, that’s either because they are too small, too big, too fast or too slow, or form part of other senses like smell. The infinity blue (breathing sculpture) is based on the worlds smallest but most important organisms Cyanobacteria.
Seed sculpture, exploring the shapes of seeds and how they produce, also the shapes, patterns and sequences in nature that replicate, the sculpture is lit by natural light which shows off its shape and design.

I think the Eden project is a great place to visit for schools and also for parents to take their children, it seems a very important place for biodiversity, the natural work, sustainability and understanding nature better. I think all schools should be able to visit as I think it would help solve the problems we are having in climate change, by teaching more children from future generations that we need to act now, understand and implement procedures from school ages to help fight this loosing battle we are having in the world today.

Using the initiatives and organisations for my one outcomes and work going forward.

A lot of the research I have done for this unit I will take with me into unit 3.3 and also my personal life and future work life. Looking into sustainability topics, the environment and also natural science and how to teach future and existing generations is important through children’s picture books. I have lots of ideas for other books, artwork for my illustrations and also work on my garden to help my contribution to sustainability.
I would say most of my life has a focus on the environment work, personal, family, home and hobbies, moving to the countryside has really helped me to do this over the last 6 months, and working on my book for this degree has bought everything together. I have definitely learnt a lot myself as well as hoping to implement awareness in my books, artwork and on my website.