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Courses are hopeless if you dont have a passion Katherine McEwen struck it very lucky when she graduated from her illustration degree at Kingston University in 1996. She was approached at her degree show by a publishing house, Walker Books, and within a month was working on her first commission, Cows in the Kitchen. McEwen had wanted to illustrate childrens books since she was 10 her mother was a childrens book illustrator, and her father a publisher of childrens books. Childrens illustration was always appealing, probably because it was part of my family. We always had loads of books at home and visited the library lots, so it just seemed obvious, says McEwen. At 27 she has now illustrated more than 15 childrens books.
The Kingston course is fairly broad, looking at all aspects of illustration from books to advertising. It was a really good course because it was varied. But we concentrated on drawing skills life drawing and location drawing making sure that we built up confidence in that area so that we could apply that skill in any way we wanted, says McEwen. But McEwen wouldnt necessarily recommend a degree in childrens book illustration. I wouldnt have gone for a degree which was just childrens books at the time. Back then I appreciated a more general course because I could tailor projects to be in book format if I wanted.
You could answer a brief however you liked. I tended to do a lot of book work during my course. You also had a chance to try everything, which gave you a chance to make up your mind better. Doing a degree worked for McEwen. In an increasingly competitive market, the contacts she made at the graduation show were invaluable. It was a chance to meet some publishers, show them her work, and get her first break.
What would have been good about a more specific course, she says, is the basic training she might have received in the specific business skills shes subsequently had to learn. When I started I didnt know how to read a contract, do my taxes or how much to charge for my drawings. I might have found it a chore at the time, but it would have been really useful to know that stuff. Mcewen's advice for the new aspiring childrens illustrator would be to keep going, and not to let one rejection put you off. If you like your work, someone else will somewhere, she says confidently. What she would have done differently, though, would have been to develop her writing skills along with the illustration.
Publishers are increasingly interested in hiring people who can write the stories to go with the pictures. And the money is better if you do both. This is the way that Marcia Williams works. Sort of. Williams has designed and written a series of comic strip books aimed at eight-year-olds, based on Shakespeare and Dickens. She started off with the Greek myths.
Her books are used in schools to make these sophisticated stories more accessible to a younger audience. Williams, now aged 53, has been illustrating for 15 years. She started to work professionally after both her children were born. The idea came from my own children. I could never find the books I wanted for them. Id had a horrible time reading adult books as a child.
Ive always been passionate about illustrating stories so it just grew. Williams didnt do a degree in art, although she is now studying for an MA in childrens literature, for background, she says. Her love of illustrating began when she was at school, at which time her parents lived abroad. I sent them cartoons and it just carried on. I did it for fun, for friends, for boyfriends and then for my children. She doesnt feel she missed out by not studying childrens illustration at university.
People who went to art school have said to me that I wouldnt be doing what I am doing now if I had gone. I dont feel the lack of it, she says. Anything that brings quality to childrens books is good. But courses are hopeless if you dont have a passion. 36 c
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