Le Salon des Livres du Jeunesse

Le Gun exhibition

Le Salon des Livres

The Students

Students and staff enjoyed a wonderful trip to the Paris Book Fair, Le Salon des Livres du Jeunesse at Montreuil. All the major French children’s book and Graphic Novel publishers were there along with illustrators and authors. The salon included small publishers such as Benoit Jacques, Alain Beulet and Fremok, together with exhibitions and seminars on contemporary European illustration. Atak (Georg Barber), Yvan Alagbe, Thierry van Hasselt and many more of our favourite illustrators were at the fair talking about their work! More fantastic illustration exhibitions we visited were, Le Gun’s Black Squid, Le Catastrophe and Brecht Evens work at Galerie Martel in central Paris.

Another highlight was an exhibition of Jean Paul Goude, Goudemalion at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. This featured a full size locomotive, a live Russian Princess and some wonderful photographs and costumes. The exhibition is well worth the trip and is on until March.

Alumni: Robert Sae-Heng

Rob Sae-Heng who graduated in 2009, is a prolific illustrator working in range of different ways and has recently been commissioned by Honda. He is currently on an art tour making work in Spain - follow him on Twitter @MrRubbertoes. To see more of Rob's work have a look at his great blog: www.robsniffsniff.blogspot.com

Printmaking Competition 2012 : Unusual Accidents

The Illustration Department is inviting all UCA BA Hons Illustration students and UCA Foundation students to take part in the second Illustration & Printmaking competition.
This year the theme is UNUSUAL ACCIDENTS!
We are looking for exciting interpretations of true stories or bits of news that have captured your attention and that can be told in ONE image via the use of printmaking. 
This year the winning entry will be selected by two esteemed judges; Emma Mason of Emma Mason British Prints and Sally Stephenson, Director of Eye Spy Gallery.This is a fantastic opportunity to win a prize and see your work form part of an original edition folio and online gallery!

The 1st prize is £250. 
The winning print will be selected by Eye Spy Gallery for professional reproduction and inclusion in the Eye Spy portfolio. More prizes to be announced closer to the date for the second and third best entries.
A folio with the best entries will be designed and published by the Illustration Course press, Jetsom. The awards, launch of the folio and exhibition will take place on 12 March 2012 with more events to follow!
Guidelines
Medium : Silk Screen or Linocuts
Colour : Black & White plus one colour
Size : 14 x 22 cm
Format : Landscape
Paper : Fabriano Accademia 200gsm

Please note that you will need to produce 10 original copies of your design in order to create the folio editions. No smudged or creased prints please.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2012.

XMAS Illustration Print Fair Wednesday 7 Dec

Don't miss our inaugural XMAS Print Fair on Wednesday 7 Dec! Illustrator Mireille Fauchon will deliver a talk about the launch of her new book and the importance of self publishing as a platform for emerging talent, before opening the fair at 12.30pm. There will be a range of limited edition goodies for sale in the George Rodger Gallery at UCA Maidstone, everything from posters to scarves, created and printed by students and staff. Exclusive signed editions of Mireille's book will also be available. Come along for loads of great ideas for alternative gifts this year - all priced at £5 and under!

Visiting Lecture: Rebecca Davies

Royal College of Art graduate, Rebecca Davies, entertained illustration students with a talk including stories of the weird and wonderful characters she explores through her work. Rebecca works as an illustrator and film maker, documenting people and places and has recently completed a long term residency in the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre in South London. Rebecca has been working with second year illustrators on a group publication...more details soon! Find out more about Rebecca's residency here: www.studioattheelephant.com
To see more of her drawings: www.illustrationsbyrebeccadavies.blogspot.com

Four Corners Books: The Prisoner of Zenda

Visiting Lecturer, Mireille Fauchon, winner of the Four Corners Books Open Submission, to make work in response to a classic novel, will have her interpretation of The Prisoner of Zenda published on 15 November. Congratulations Mireille!

UCA Illustration at Maidstone is moving to Farnham!

The BA Hons Illustration Course is moving to UCA Farnham. Our new First Years will be starting at the UCA Farnham campus in Surrey, on 1 September 2012. We are still the only BA Hons Illustration Course at UCA and we'll be bringing the success of the Illustration Course to a new venue! We're really excited about working in a communication media environment and trying out the great printmaking facilities at Farnham.

Alumni: Fernando Feijoo

Since graduating from the course Fernando has exhibited his work internationally. He worked as a Master Printmaker at the Curwen Studio for four years and is continuing to develop his work as well as teaching Printmaking at several universities across the UK. See more of his work here: www.fernandofeijoo.com

Cape Observer Comica Graphic Short Story Prize

Faye Moorhouse, who graduated this year, winning Best in Show at D&AD New Blood, has had her work featured on the Guardian website in the Cape/Observer/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize. Faye's book The Cat Ladies of Czechoslovakia was selected by judge Bryan Talbot as one of the best entries from the five years the competition has been running. Congratulations Faye!

Scott Dessert, who graduated from the course in 2010, has also had his short story, Catsitter, (there seems to be a bit of a theme developing!?) selected as one of the best entries for the prize. Scott works in a mixture of handmade and digital college. Well done Scott!

Alumni: Leah Fusco

Graduating in 2007, Leah Fusco won the V&A Student Illustrator of the Year Award for her book, Long Man. Since completing an MA at the RCA she has returned to the course as a lecturer and continued to develop her practice, exploring landscape and culture. This year, her work has been selected for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards and will be featured in the annual and on the awards website. Here are some images from her reportage project on immigration at the Port of Dover in Kent.

Magic Theatre Exhibition

Illustration staff, Iro Tsavala, Emily Mitchell and Astrid Chesney, have been invited to show their work at the Magic Theatre, the exhibition accompanying the International Illustration and Writing Symposium taking place on 3 and 4 November at Manchester Metropolitan University. Fellow exhibitors include Audrey Niffenegger, Geoff Grandfield, Dan Fern, Carolyn Gowdy and Anna Bhushan.

Iro Tsavala

Emily Mitchell

Audrey Niffenegger

Visiting Lecture: Olivier Kugler

Award winning travel illustrator Olivier Kugler delivered a fantastic talk at UCA earlier this month and also stayed on to help lucky second year illustration students with an afternoon workshop. Kugler's position as a leading reportage artist has been recognised by the Association of Illustrators, receiving their Gold Award in 2004 and more recently by the V&A Illustration Awards, both in 2006 and 2011. Kugler studied graphic design in Germany and Illustration as Visual Essay in New York. He exhibits his work and illustrates for editorial, book and design clients. Visit his great website here www.olivierkugler.com

International Illustration & Writing Symposium

Two members of the illustration staff team, Jim Walker and Adrian Holme, will be guest speakers at the second International Illustration & Writing Symposium being held at Manchester Metropolitan University this week. The Symposium will investigate illustration as visual language and consider the image in relationship to writing. Here are a couple of images illustrating their lectures.

Jim's Lecture: Image by Matthew Richardson

Adrian's lecture: Find out more about Marshall McLuhan

Cheltenham Illustration Awards

Third Year illustration student, Scott Crook, has had work selected for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards. Scott's work will feature in the Cheltenham Illustration Awards Annual and be showcased on the website. The selected work came from a second year reportage project, exploring the day to day lives of bankers in the City of London. Scott spent days drawing and observing bankers at work and play during the financial crisis. Well done Scott!

Printmaking Competition

This year we launched a new printmaking competition sponsored by the Emma Mason Gallery. Students were invited to make prints in response to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We had a fantastic response and our guest judge Emma Mason was very impressed by the winning entries! The overall winner, Spike Stephenson, received a £250 prize, with Faye Moorhouse as a runner up and 6 more shortlisted entries. We’re looking forward to seeing more great work from this year’s competition. To see more from Emma Mason British Prints follow this link: www.emmamason.co.uk

Faye Moorhouse 

Spike Stephenson

Megan Bentley

Catherine Pape

First Year Welcome

We kicked off September with a maritime themed week for our first years. Between boat building and drawing smugglers and pirates, (well, third years bribed to dress up), we managed to squeeze in a trip to Dover. The weather was beautiful and the students produced some great drawings. The week finished with an exhibition and a prize giving - well done first years!

Alumni: Ben Cain

BA Hons Illustration graduate Ben Cain has worked on some exciting projects since leaving the course in 2009. Ben's commissions include: The Financial Times, The Folio Society, The Guardian, Running Press and the Hampstead Theatre. Ben is represented by The Artworks illustration agency and you can see more of his work here: www.bencain

Second Year Illustration Show at County Hall

The Second Year Illustrators organised a great end of year exhibition, Follow Me Maidstone, at Maidstone County Hall Gallery in the summer. Everyone was involved and loads of hard work went into finding the venue, designing, funding, promoting and hanging the show. The opening was a big success and we all had a lovely evening! Here are some images from the show...

Joe Becci

Esther Farmer

Spike Stephenson and Joe Becci

Opening

Alumni: Paul Blow

Illustrator Paul Blow is one of our graduates. Paul has gone on to work for clients
such as The Guardian, Saatchi & Saatchi, The Boston Globe, The Times, New
Scientist and has collaborated with Nobrow and Magma. His awards include,
AOI Gold and Bronze, Silver in the 3x3 Pro Show No.5 and a V&A Illustration prize.
See more of Paul's work: www.paulblow.com

Visiting Lecture: Graham Rawle

We had a fantastic start to the year when award winning collage artist and writer, Graham Rawle came in to talk about his practice and to work with our First Year students on a one day project. Graham's novel, Woman's World, created entirely from fragments of found text, is currently being made into a feature film! Here is a taster of Graham's work, see more on his website: www.grahamrawle.com