Katie Clemingson

The next event at the Just Imagine book shop i went to was another insight into the professional world of children's book illustration featuring another guest speaker, Katie Cleminson a 27 year old freelance illustrator who's work has been published by Jonathan Cape (Random House Children's Books).

Katie graduated from North Wales School of Art with a first class BA (Hons). In her final year at college she was the only Illustrator from Great Britain to be chosen by the highly respected Bologna Illustrators Exhibition. Her work has been exhibited in London, Poland, Japan, Italy and Korea.
Katie uses a very unusual medium, a pippete with heavy black ink to achieve her desired outline of her drawings. she also uses Photoshop to scale and arrange images for publishing.
She also mentioned that she had won and been highly commended in the Macmillan Prize competition which i am now familiar with. Also has been the winner of The Booktrust Best Emerging Illustrator Award 2009 and name as on of the Booktrust Best New Illustrator 2011.
Her most recently published title, Otto the Book Bear has had great reviews and was released in July. I thought this story was adorable because as a child I always loved books that told of things such as toys coming alive at night, but the difference here is that Otto is an Illustration from a book and then he gets left behind while the family move house so he goes on an adventure to find somewhere he belongs which very fittingly turns out to be a library.

Other great titles by Katie include Box of Tricks, and Wake Up.

children's book shop

I have recently discovered a speciality children's book shop just round the corner from where I live. I decided to go to one of their monthly meetings and that week they had guest speakers who are employees at Walker books also a member of our group already published by Walker, (you may recognise such titles like, Where's Wally? and Going on a Bear Hunt). It was really exciting for me, I wasn't expecting so much information on how to break into the children's book industry and learning about how much effort and labour of love that really goes into making them. One book which had highly detailed drawings throughout took 7 years to complete and publish. I was relived to find out that deadlines were not an issue with them as they would prefer that the book was the best it can possibly be.
The thing I love the most about children's books is the variety of different artistic styles and clever use of simplicity, especially when it comes to the younger clients that may not be able to read just yet and so need a simple picture that reads well and is not too much information to take in. It made me feel like I stand a really good chance of being a successful children's book illustrator/writer because I feel my strong point is my characters they can be very expressive and can easily be related to by people of all ages. My backgrounds/ scenery may not be very good or practised but from what I have learnt so far backgrounds are not so important, a lot of books I have seen don't have a background or scenery on every page in fact the plainer pages tend to illustrate more of what the character is feeling and thinking more intimately with the reader.
I feel so privileged to have a place so enthusiastic about children's books so close to home I can see that I will learn a great deal from them and can't wait for the next meeting!

Macmillan children's book illustrator competition

I entered a competition in May which was an illustration competition for a children's book which influenced work for my illustration and printmaking classes.The brief asked that we sketch out the whole 32 paged book and finish and colour 4 paged spreads which could include the cover.I worked very hard on this project and only had a few weeks to finish it, unfortunately I didn't win or was highly commended by the judging panel but I had a look at the work of those who were at the exhibition in Foyles Bookshop, London to see what i was up against. The winner was Gemma Merino a student from the Cambridge School of Art with her story 'The Crocodile Who Didn't Like Water' i thought this was a very good piece as it was in keeping with the age range of no older than 5years and the style was very lovable, i also found it was easy on the eye for a youngster which is always a good thing as many were confusing such as a piece by Emma Bennett (left) titled 'Sidney and His Shadow' which was mostly jumbled up text and small illustrations the l

ikes of what you would see on the side of a coffee cup or jumped up organic produce no offence intended but I do not feel that this was particularly good or suitable for a young child.

I liked all the pieces for their different and professional looking styles I really feel that I need to neaten up my finished pieces next time I enter even though the brief said that the book can be done in any media it looked like all the work exhibited was tidied up on Photoshop and I feel that this is where I failed. I also feel that I had seen these styles before somewhere and they weren't very original where as my style is my own and not to sound to sour but I feel that if my work was neatened up I would of won.

here are the rest that I liked at the exhibition.
Second Prize Elys Dolan 'Weasels' (Cambridge School of Arts)

Third Prize Jay Wright 'The Lonley Matador' (University of West England)

Highly Commended Sophie Burrows 'Pigs Can't Fly' (University of West London)