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A peek in her Studio!
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Amy June Bates is a freelance illustrator
with Shannon and Associates.
She has worked with Harper Collins,
Farrer Strauss And Giroux, Hyperion Books for
Children and Barnes and Noble among others.
Amy grew up in Utah and graduated from
Brigham Young University in Illustration.
While in Utah, she worked for the Waterford Institute
doing educational illustration. During her time with
Waterford Amy illustrated over twenty books and
learned all about this sort of thing.
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Most importantly, she gets to draw which makes her happy.
Amy now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with
her husband Alex and their ambidexterous son Evan.
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Sketch and illustration of Swan Lake.
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A few books illustrated by her hand:
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Dreams Taking Flight by Kathleen Krull
You Can Do It! by Tony Dungy
The Dog Who Belonged to No One by Amy Hest
Martin’s Dream by Jane Kurtz
Abe’s Fish: A Boyhood Tale of A.Lincoln by Jen Bryant
. Illustration from the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Easy Reader Classic series, adapted by Catherine Nichols.
.. From The Dog Who Belonged to No One by Amy Hest.
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31 oktober 2009
~Amy June Bates~
30 oktober 2009
~Halloween~
28 oktober 2009
~Janet & Anne, Grahame Johnstone
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Janet Grahame Johnstone (1 June 1928 - 1979)
and Anne Grahame Johnstone (1 Jun 1928 - 25 May 1998)
were twin sisters and British children's book illustrators
best known for their delicate, detailed prolific artwork
and for illustrating Dodie Smith's classic book
"The Hundred and One Dalmatians."
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Books illustrated include:
-Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben,
- Folk Tales of the World,
-The Hundred and One Dalmatians,
-Miracle in the Wilderness,
-My Book of Enchanting Nursery Rhymes,
-Peter Pan and Wendy,
-Santa Claus is Coming to Town,
-Tales of the Greeks and Trojans.
. . . .
The twins were born in 1928 to British muralist and
costume designer Doris Zinkeisen and her husband,
Captain Grahame Johnstone.
They attended the Heathfield School in Ascot, Berkshire
during World War II; their artistic bent nurtured
both at home and at school. Later, they attended
St Martin's School of Art in London,
where they studied period clothing styles.
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The Johnstone sisters' popularity took off in
the early 1950s, when they were noticed by
publishers and acquired a growing reputation
as talented illustrators. They always worked together,
passing drawings back and forth across their studio
until both twins were satisfied with the final outcome.
Janet specialized in animals and birds.
Anne focused on the period costumes that so dominated
their work. Because of their symbiotic collaboration,
until the death of Janet in 1979, there was never a book
illustrated under either one of their names alone.
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The first important book the twins worked on was
The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith,
who was already a very successful playwright
and author. In 1956 she invited them to illustrate
her first children's book, and it was an immediate
success, captivating parents and children alike.
Eventually, Smith's book was made into a
feature-length animated film by Walt Disney.
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The twins' further success with later Smith books,
The Starlight Barking and The Midnight Kittens,
made them the most widely recognized illustrators
of children's books in England at the time.
Their business association developed into an
enduring friendship until Smith died in November 1990.
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27 oktober 2009
~Pierre Carrier-Belleuse.~
Pierre Carrier-Belleuse was born outside Paris
in January 1851. He was a student of
Alexandre Cabanel at l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris,
and also of the decorator Galland.
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He began exhibiting at the Salon in 1875, and
in 1885 he began to work exclusively in pastels,
concentrating on portraiture, for which he is now known.
He was awarded an Honorable Mention in 1887,
and a Silver Medal in the Exhibition Universelle of 1889.
Works by Pierre Carrier-Belleuse are housed in
numerous public and private collections
throughout France, including those in Gray,
La Rochelle, Le Puy and Mulhouse.
. . .
. ..
The versatile painter Pierre Carrier-Belleuse grew
successful at painting and drawing under the hand
of his famous father, the preeminent 19th century
sculptor Albert Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.
Pierre also studied under Cabanel and Galland
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and debuted at the
Paris Salon in 1875.
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He mastered pastels (a difficult medium only recently
revived by the Impressionist school) rendering genre works,
landscapes, historical subjects and portraiture.
Other Parisian venues in which he exhibited included
the Society of French Artists (1888) and the
National Society of Fine Arts (1893-1911).
He received an honorable mention for his work in 1887
and a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1889.
He died in 1932.
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26 oktober 2009
~Michael Foreman~
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Michael Foreman was born 21 March 1938
is an award-winning British author and illustrator,
mainly for children. He lives in London.
He has worked with Michael Morpurgo on many
occasions, and has written books that are nearly all set in,
or after, World War II, such as War Boy.
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Michael Foreman is possibly one of the most popular
and prolific illustrators of modern children's books.
Born in Pakefield, Suffolk in 1938, he grew up near
Lowestoft and studied at Lowestoft School of Art
and later at the Royal College of Art, where he won
a scholarship to the U.S. After graduating,
he lectured at St Martin's School of Art and then
moved to Chicago where he worked as Art director
of Playboy. He later returned to London and worked
as Art Director of King. He returned to lecturing in 1967
and has since worked at the Royal College of Art, the
London School of Printing and the Central School of Art.
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His career as an illustrator began in 1961 when he
illustrated the Comic Alphabet written by Eric Partridge
and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Over the years he has illustrated books by Charles Dickens,
Oscar Wilde, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling and many
others as well as writing and illustrating his own books.
He has also designed Christmas stamps for the
Post Office and regularly contributed to
American and European magazines.
Foreman has over 180 books to his name.
His array of prizes including the
Kate Greenaway Medal (twice), the Smarties Book Prize,
the Kurt Maschler Award, the Children's Book Award,
the Bologna Book Prize and the Francis William's
Illustration Award (twice). Exhibitions of his work
have been held in Europe, America and Japan.
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His colorful book War and Peas is about a king
(depicted as a lion wearing a suit of armor) who
begs food from a rich nation, only to have to battle
the Fat King's army men amid towering piles of
oversized food. The book can be seen as a parody
of the struggle between Great Britain and
Northern Ireland. Penni Cotton notes in
Picture Books Sans Frontières the way that Foreman
has the king and his impoverished subjects
appear washed-out and faded in the beginning.
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Fox Tale is a children’s book about a litter of Foxes
who live an urban life rather than a rural life.
This is particularly appropriate considering the
number of Foxes that now live in the cities.
”Mother always kept us warm
and safe. Father went hunting
in the night and brought us food}
at dawn.
I will never forget the first time
I peeped outside the den. The air
was so fresh it took my breath away.
The birds were singing to the
rising sun and a cool breeze rustled
the leaves of early spring”
Trains are known in this children’s book as whirlwinds.
Mother’s advice was very sound
“Never, ever, go on the tracks of the whirlwinds”
25 oktober 2009
~Sunday Poem~
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN!
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Painting by Marcus Stone (1840-1921)
24 oktober 2009
~Charles Robinson~
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Charles Robinson was born in 1870.
His father was an illustrator and his grandfather
engraved the work of illustrators for the burgeoning
magazine and newspaper market of the mid 1800's.
His older brother, Thomas Heath Robinson,
was an illustrator as was William Heath Robinson,
his younger brother. Talent ran deep in the family,
and all three brothers were raised in an atmosphere
that guided them towards their final profession.
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After a childhood of assimilating his father's
(and his uncle's) craft, and a high school education,
Charles was apprenticed to a printer where he worked
the lithographic stones. For the seven years of his
indenture, he did his best to take art lessons in the
evenings. His studies were sufficient enough to
earn him a probationary berth at the Royal Academy
in 1892, but finances kept him from taking advantage
of it. Apprentices didn't make much money and
the fortunes of his family must have been affected
seriously by the revolutions occurring in the
printing and reproductive fields.
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Charles Robinson is geboren in Londen in 1870 en
is overleden in 1937.
Hij was een productief Britse boek illustrator en
de zoon van een tekenaar en zijn broers
Thomas Heath Robinson
en William Heath Robinson waren ook illustratoren.
Hij illustreerde veel sprookjes-en kinderboeken
in heel zijn carrière, waaronder
~Eugene Field 's Lullaby Land (1897),
~Sprookjes van Hans Christian Andersen (1899).
~Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1907),
~Grimm's Fairy Tales (1910),
~Frances Hodgson Burnett ‘s The Secret Garden (1911),
~Happy Prince and Other Tales door Oscar Wilde (1913).
Hij was ook een actieve schilder, vooral op latere
leeftijd, Hij werd verkozen tot het
Royal Institute of Painters in aquarel in 1932.
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~ Story; Nightingale and the Rose ~
~ Illustraties ~
~ Charles Robinson ~
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