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The Illustrators Journal

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Tag Archives: artwork

Happy Birthday Rosalind Allchin!

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Illustrators Journal in ARTICLES, CHILDREN'S BOOK

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artist as brand, artwork, childrens books, illustration, illustrators journal, innovation


Rosalind is a terrific illustrator and storyteller as her book The Frog Princess can attest to.

The creator of The Frog Princess, a delightful fractured fairy tale, Rosalind Allchin describes herself thus: “I think I’m an illustrator who writes stories. I start off with some kind of visual image, probably of a character. Although I’ve never had any formal art training, I’ve always been interested in the visual arts. When I was in my teens, we used to go family camping in Europe, and visiting the art galleries in Italy was a wonderful introduction. However it’s only relatively recently that I’ve taken up a brush myself.”
Although presently a resident of Ottawa, Ontario, Rosalind was born in West Sussex on the south coast of England on March 26, 1949, the second of four children and the only girl. “We all went to the local primary (elementary) school, and those years I remember as a lovely period in my life, full of painting and reading stories.

In talking about her approach to illustrating, Rosalind says, “I tend to complete each picture before moving to the next one. Sometimes there are perspectives that I can’t work out. For example, the picture on page 14 in which the Frog Princess is jumping down from the royal balcony took me ages. I actually made little sculpture clay heads of the prince, his bodyguard and the queen. Faces look so different from different angles. I’ve learned of the magic of mirrors. Sometimes a drawing just doesn’t look quite right, but it ‘s difficult to see quite where the error lies. But viewing the drawing differently, through a mirror, magically jolts the perceptions and the problem is revealed.”
Picture books, even fractured fairy tales, require research. “Out of interest, I borrowed a lot of library books on costume. Over five hundred years of medieval life, styles changed dramatically, not to mention differences between classes and between countries. I’ve actually mixed periods.”
“I work a lot, but I guess I’m really slow. I go up to my desk every day except one day a week when I pot, a wonderful therapy. I rent space in a studio which is nice because I meet other people. I have a wheel and am hoping in the near future to buy my own kiln. It’s good to have something constructive to do when I’m having problems writing or drawing. I have a lovely attic space where I work. I’m gradually acquiring all sorts of amazing things, like a scanner which will make sending off manuscripts easier. I used to photograph the art or get color copies made which is very expensive.”
“I have four or five stories more or less written up. I find the writing quite hard in terms of creating language that is clear and simple and yet interesting. It’s so easy for it to fall flat. My initial writing tends to be much too long winded, and I am getting better at ruthless cutting. As soon as I’ve got the story idea worked out, I play around dividing it into pages and thinking about the pictures and how I can have a different action or setting on each page. Right from the start really, I’m working the two things together.”

Source: Profile by Dave Jenkinson/Canadian Review of Materials

For More

Why Bilingual Books Are Important

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CHILDREN'S BOOK, EDITORIAL

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african american, artist as brand, artwork, digital media, digital painting, Dr Suess, hispanics, illustration, kidlitart


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A few years ago I was assigned to create around fifty spot illustrations for a series of educational booklets. As part of that assignment I was asked if I could illustration other ethnic types other than white. “Of course” was my response. boy-waving-armsOnce I had past the sketch phase I was told the sketches of African-American and Hispanics I did were too ethnic looking and needed to be less so. I took that to mean more white. After several rounds of alterations my work was approved. However it illustrated to me a fundamental problem in our society. There are some companies and people who are afraid of the “other” and do not want to offend them. Most of these people I suspect have very little contact with ethnic groups other than their own. That’s unfortunate to me because the differences is what makes our world interesting. The more we interact wit the “others” the less we fear them and the better our society will be for it. NOW,…more than ever it is important to reach out and get to know each other. Only when we understand the needs, wants, experiences and hopes of other ethnic groups will we have a fully integrated society.  storytellerOk how how does this relate to Kidlit? Simple, it starts with kids. Max Benavides’s article says it better than I could so here it is…

The books they read and the books parents read to their kids need to reflect our society as a whole. Many Americans are familiar with well-known mainstream children’s books such as the Dr. Seuss series, Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are. But what about Americans who come from another culture, speak another language or are bilingual? What children’s books are there for them and their families?

This group, until recently, was especially missing from children’s literature, often referred to as kidlit in the publishing world. These are the families whose parents’ first language is Spanish and whose children are learning English in school. When you add in the fact that the majority of the 54 million Latinos in the U.S. are bilingual and yet very few children’s books are bilingual you have a tremendous gap in books that can speak to this community and its culture, particularly the parents. That means they don’t see themselves in the children’s books distributed at their schools, stocked in their local libraries or sold in bookstores. The effect of this invisibility and absence in children’s books is dramatic and negatively affects the self-esteem of these children.

Nationally, nearly 25 percent of all K-12 students are Latino and the percentage is only growing. In California, the most populous state in the country, Latinos comprise 53 percent of all students in K-12. Latino families like these—who live all across the country from the Southeast to the West Coast—are often bilingual with Spanish being the main home language for many.

And, guess what? Until now there have been very few children’s books for this huge population of children who want to see themselves and their families in children’s books.

Finally, one publisher is doing something about it. In the early 2000s, Katherine Del Monte founded Lectura Books and since then has been publishing bilingual books aimed at this large and increasingly expanding population. Her desire has been for parents and their kids to learn together how to love literature and to see themselves in the literature. These families are often marginalized in our society and their stories untold. To remedy this, she started Family Stories for Parent Involvement.

“We all want a literate society,” says Del Monte. “The question is how do we get there? How do we do we reach millions of families who speak Spanish at home and help them learn English, learn how to read, and to build vocabulary. Reading is the essential building block for literacy and if we don’t create bilingual books for these families, our society will lose the edge that literate and educated citizens bring to the country and its economy.”

Based on her research and personal experience, Del Monte decided to tell their stories in a combination of both English and Spanish. To date, she has published 25 bilingual books including Letters Forever, a moving story about a young girl in San Antonio who exchanges letters with her grandfather who lives in Veracruz, Mexico. She dreams of seeing him again one day and when she becomes 18 she visits him in Veracruz. It’s a story of love across the generations and the power of culture and music.

Another title published by Lectura Books is The Shark That Taught Me English. Written and illustrated for elementary students, it tells the story of a girl named Sophia who only speaks Spanish and how she learns English with the help of a shark image that her teacher uses in class. Once she begins to learn English, her self-confidence grows and by the end of the book she is teaching English to her father. Del Monte’s books have won many awards including the Moonbeam Award, the Independent Publishers Award, the International Latino Book Award and been listed on the Texas State Reading List.

“My goal is to show the stories that are overlooked by mainstream publishers,” explains Del Monte. “I want to publish bilingual books that connect families to their stories. Rather than allow this audience to be an afterthought at best, I want to showcase the brilliance and wisdom of their stories. No one in the U.S. is doing this today. You simply can’t ignore a quarter of all the children in our schools. You can’t ignore their parents simply because they don’t speak English, are immigrants and work in low-paying jobs. True diversity in book publishing will only come by publishing in English and Spanish for the 37 million people in our country who speak Spanish.”

This is not a new concern. In 2014, a hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooksbecame a social media phenomenon when two authors of color, Ellen Oh and Lamar Giles, tired of the lack of diversity in kidlit, launched the hashtag and a movement was born that brought awareness to the stunning lack of diversity in American children’s literature.

Flavorwire recently reported that, “In 2013, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in Wisconsin cataloged 3,200 children’s books, constituting a majority of all children’s books published that year. Of these, only 68 — about two percent — had black authors. A slightly larger number, 93, had black protagonists. The numbers are either comparable or worse for Asian Americans, Latinos, and American Indians, and show stagnant or regressive movement.” They also noted that a 2014 Publisher’s Weekly salary survey included questions about race and ethnicity and it found some dismal results: of the people working in publishing 89 percent are white and only three percent are Hispanic or Latino, 3 percent Asian and one percent African-American.

The bottom line: although the U.S. is growing more diverse every year, you would never know it from children’s books or from the publishing industry itself. For that reason, Lectura Books plays a key and necessary role by publishing books that are culturally relevant to children and families who are often ignored. The long-term outcome will be to produce literate young people who go on to college and contribute to our society and its economic vitality. That’s how you build a literate society.

Follow Max Benavidez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MaxBenavidez
Max Benavidez PhD, Adjunct Prof., USC Annenberg, Assoc VP, CMC

LevinLand Newsletter May 2105

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL, illustration

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andrew lustig, artist as brand, artwork, drawing, graphic novel, Jewish artists, levinland, lon levin, marvin schotland


Over the last year and a half I’ve been working on different kind of projects using a more serious graphic novel style. I’ve been fortunate for some publications to give me a chance to show what I can do. This newsletter shows some of that work. There is more to come and as they are published I will show them on this site. This is a perfect example of transforming yourself into something different if you want. I encourage anyone who is contemplating a move like mine to go for it. You never know where it leads and it will challenge you and you will grow creatively.

LL.GN.NEWSLETTER.1.2015.800

Pinterest Post

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Illustrators Journal in illustration

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artist as brand, artwork, cartoonist, digital painting, illustration, illustrators journal


If this art tickles you in the right places contact me at lonfellow@gmail.com

Aside

Happy Holidays

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CHILDREN'S BOOK, EDITORIAL, illustration

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artist as brand, artwork, cartoon, cartoonist, childrens books, Christmas artwork, innovation, Kwansa, New Year's artwork, Saint Nick, Santa Claus


HOLIDAY'15

Art Comes From Within

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Illustrators Journal in EDITORIAL

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abstract art, artist as brand, artwork, illustrators journal, innovation, levinland, lon levin, sketching, xanate media


imagesizer
http://insidedateline.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/14/22303556-eyals-story?lite
The story of Ayal Sherman who just graduated Syracuse University with a degree in fine arts is an example of the healing and inspiring qualities being creative can bring forth.
As I watched this NBC Dateline piece I thought about my feet and head and eyes and realized that my ability to create art is not in my right hand, it is in my thoughts. This is something Ayal lives every day. The takeaway is the doing and creating of art is the reward not who buys it or slaps you on the back with praise. Belief that you’re doing matters as this piece so beautifully portrays. It runs 9 or so minutes but it is worth watch. Be inspired.

My Work in CSQ Magazine

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Illustrators Journal in ARTICLES

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artist as brand, artwork, cyber security, digital media, elan musk, hyperloop, illustration, Levinland studio, technology


cyber piracy articlehyperloop Elan Musk

CSQ magazine is a great publication with all sorts of great innovative looks to business leaders and new technology. Gadgets, cars, travel etc is all covered in this incisive magazine. The articles I illustrated were extremely interesting especially the “hyper loop” look into the future of travel.

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SANTA DROPS INTO A FEW FAMOUS PAINTINGS

25 Wednesday Dec 2013

Tags

art, artist as brand, artwork, Botticelli, Carvaggio, christmas, innovation, Lautrec, Levinland studio, manet, midnight Mass, monet, Rousseau, Santa Claus


Photographer Ed Wheeler has been very busy this holiday season preparing a feast of amusing artwork, giving familiar masterpieces a distinctly festive feel with a touch of digital trickery.He has spent the last few years taking self-portraits while dressed as Santa Claus – and inserting them into famous paintings.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2526518/Photographer-inserts-selfies-dressed-Santa-famous-works-art.html#ixzz2oVzgiMmt
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on FacebookScreen Shot 2013-12-25 at 11.02.22 AM

Posted by Illustrators Journal | Filed under CATCH-ALL

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Words And Images: The art of Patty Haft

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL

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artist as brand, artwork, Beverly Hills, Disney, illustrator, innovation, levinland, Levinland studio, lon levin, Saban Entertainment, sony, technology


photo

Earlier this year my good friend and fellow artist Patty Haft agreed to come to my design agency and mentor our people in recovery in the art of marketing and sales. She was a great help to me and those people as she advised, cajoled and prodded budding creatives to learn to how work as a professional in a design agency.

I’ve known Patty since high school when she was one of a group of young girls we guys used to admire at on the beach in Santa Monica. Years later I hired her and her husband, illustrator Dan Long to work on many projects for me when I was the executive creative director at Saban Entertainment. To return the favor she and Dan hired me as a VP of Entertainment Advertising at their ad agency in Valencia. Patty and I spent many days pitching business to all sorts of entertainment companies and worked on many campaigns for Disney, Sony and others. Over the years we both got divorced and remarried and divorced again but maintained our friendship.

PH 1When I asked Patty to help me earlier this year I had no idea she was in a major transition in her life. As she tells me now her search for what she wanted to do in the future galvanized as she worked with us at BTS Communications. The result of which is shown here. Artwork pieces that use discarded paper and recycles them into beautiful pieces of art that are fun to look at and have messaging in the art with the use of pictures, graphics and typography. All of her pieces are three dimensional and some move.

Patty is a graduate of Art Center in Pasedena where she majored in illustration and design. Her career has been in entertainment advertising where she successfully ran her own agency along with her then husband Dan Long. Now she is enjoying the creation of fine art.

As we talked over some Mexican food at Sharkey’s in Beverly Hills Patty told me she was going to start exhibiting and selling her work in the late Spring at local fairs and art walks, which I enthusiastically supported. I will follow up with Patty as the months go by and update you on the results of her efforts.

Getty Museum Lifts Copyright Restrictions on Digital Archive

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Illustrators Journal in CATCH-ALL

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artist as brand, artwork, digital media, digital photography, Getty, illustration, lon levin


This article could be a very valuable piece of information to you if you use or want to use archived photography. I’m wondering if this will have a ripple effect on the usage of photos and art found on the net. For me it’s another tool that will expand an artist’s capabilities and push the trailblazers to keep ahead of the “copyists”.
Screen shot 2013-08-19 at 9.46.15 AM

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Editor’s Note

Visit www.levinlandstudio.com and see the portfolio of the editor Lon Levin

The Spring Issue '17 of the Illustrators Journal will be out in April with all new interviews with cartoonist Mark Stamaty, Fantasy artist and Society of Illustrator's Hall of Fame artists Kinuko Y Craft and some artwork from Millenial sensation MollyCrabtree.

The issue will focus on protest and the arts from Daumier to Ingram Pinn.

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