I found the symposium a useful insight into the illustration practice of current illustrators being able to hear first hand accounts of how they would approach their work and what it is like to work in the industry. It was interesting to hear both the views of well established and up and coming illustrators a like, I got an account of what the industry was formerly to work in and how it is now for illustrators starting a career.
Jan Pienkowski
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| An example of Jan Pienkowski's work. |
Jan's career has been very successful and for up and coming illustrators it was visibly more difficult to make it, or keep a sustainable career in the industry. I found that Jan's success could be found from his connections that he has made over the years (1968-present) as a veteran in the industry with both writers and publishers. Due to this, I found it more relevant for me as an illustrator to hear what the other guest speakers, Sam Vanallemeersch and Nicolas André had to say.
Sam Vanallemeersch
Sam Vanallemeersch to me showed that keeping your personal work and commercial work separate entirely is a more sustainable way of working in the illustration industry. For both these areas of work he produced vastly different works, this meant that his commercial work was malleable and could fit a clients requirements without sacrificing his integrity on his personal work. His work displayed a great amount of detail and his sketchbooks to me were the most interesting aspect of his talk. The method of idea development he had was unique. His sketchbooks featured a character in sporadically appearing on pages 'The Most Dangerous Man in the World' which was a quirk I enjoyed.
Nicolas André
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| An example of Nicolas André's work. |
I was surprised to find that I found Nicolas André's to be the most interesting and impacting guest speaker to me when I had prior to the symposium been looking forward to hearing Jan Pienkowski's talk the most. I found Nicolas André to be the most relatable out of the guest speakers and I enjoyed both his work and hearing what he had to say.
Nicolas I found had a relevant view on what it is to be working as an illustrator in today's industry and his approach and work ethic was realistic to me as he did not claim to live and breathe illustration but instead had a balanced approach to work. Nicolas' screen prints in particular caught my eye with his effective use of only primary/3 colours. He also had created original publications with his books being read page-to-page as well as folded out as an entire image, you could also fold every page to another page. It was evident that a lot of thought went into making his books with things such as colour separation and paper engineering to make his pop-up and fold-out books. At the end of the symposium the guest speakers opened up the audience to a Q&A session, I didn't at this point answer any questions but found this is where the opinions of Nicolas and Sam most topical as they gave a relevant answer to me as an illustrator.
Afterwards, I stayed behind to speak with Nicolas André about his practice. I asked him about how he worked - with layering screen prints and generating ideas, I also discovered that none of his works were reprints but all original and unique copies which I found very impressive. I found the illustration symposium to be a very useful talk to help me think about my own professional practice.