Tuesday 25 November 2008

Trip To London 24/11/08

We decided to have a trip into London to visit the Illustration cupboard for some research and sketching for our projects. These are the sketches that got done on the train...Robyn by Guy, Johan by Robyn, Charlotte by Johan and Guy by Charlotte...


The Illustration Cupboard is full of it's Winter collection at the moment so it was a lot fuller than it has been on my previous visits! I was particularly impressed by Christopher Wormell's woodcut prints and Jan Pienkowski's illustrations for the Nutcracker book. John Lawrences wood engravings of Lyra's Oxford for the Phillip Pullman books always get my attention and some mixed media illustrations by Catherine Rayner had us all selecting which one we would buy if we had the money!

www.illustrationcupboard.com

We visited the V&A, mainly because it's quite an inspiring place to be even if there is not a particular exhibition you want to see! I had found out that there was a Beatrix Potter exhibition on and as well as this there is a 'Prints and Drawings' room which I hadn't looked around yet. There were a lot of etching prints to be seen, and lucky for me some drypoint prints as well! Some were interesting just because they were drypoint but these are the ones that stood out to me by Auguste Rodin and James McNeill Whistler.
Of Auguste Rodin's I liked the quality of the line, some were still quite smudgy which was nice to see. Also because it's wasn't a portrait illustration or a landscape, which seemed to be the theme among the other prints!


James McNeill Whistler's prints I liked because he seemed to have a forward figure in all of his prints. This made the composition quite interesting, it wasn't like they were the focus but just bought the whole image together.


In the V&A there is a tiny exhibition of Beatrix Potter's illustrations 'The Art of Leaving Out' with initial sketches from her work for the book 'Roly Poly-Pudding'. It was so tiny we nearly missed the exhibition altogether but the little illustrations were very inspiring. It was nice to see work of hers other than peter rabbit.



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