Jeff West For children's books
Visiting Brighton’s Phoenix Art Space Open Studios this weekend (May 11th 2024) reminded me of the workshop I attended there in 2016, Drawing Fantastical Characters for Children’s Books with Chris Gilvan-Cartwright.
The sessions explored ways of creating and developing characters in an experimental, playful and intuitive way.
Consequences warm-up
We warmed up with some sketching games and exercises. ‘Picture consequences’ creates a character with (nominally) a head, body and legs on a folded piece of paper. Each artist draws a body part—from the head down—leaving small marks indicating the join to the next anatomical segment. Once complete, the paper is unfolded to reveal the full character…with hilarious consequences.
Character building
After lunch, the meat of the workshop began. Experimental watercolour washes and paint dripping, in a controlled, uncontrolled way, letting the characters develop. By the end of the day, my portrait gallery was complete.
Fantastical portrait gallery
Taking my work home
The workshop was inspiring and varied, forcing me to create artwork with less deliberation than I employ naturally. I enjoyed the ‘consequences’.
As yet, these characters have not appeared in my children’s book work but more fantastical things have happened.
About our tutor
Find out more about our tutor, contemporary painter, Chris Gilvan-Cartright at The Baron Gilvan.
