The Children’s Book Festival is a nationwide celebration of children’s books and reading, which this year will be taking place from October 3rd-26th.

In 2007, the festival will once again be jam-packed with a huge range of book-themed entertainments and activities, with over 1000 events taking place in libraries, schools, bookshops, and community arts centres all over the island of Ireland.

SCAMP will be concentrating content on the area of chidren’s book illustration with articles and interviews over the next few weeks. So check back regularly.

If you are in London October 13th and 14th you are bound to come across this great annual event run by The Campaign for Drawing – The Big Draw which has tons of events taking place all through October. Quentin Blake, one of the key patrons of the event even dragged himself away from his inkpot long enough give a rare interview to The Guardian. Big Draw Dublin anyone?

Yet more art-on-wall-stuff, bejaypers! IGI members Brian Gallagher (selfportrait above) and PJ Lynch have had their work selected for inclusion in the 126th Annual Royal Ulster Academy of Arts Exhibition.

The official opening is tonight, September 27th, and the RUA show will be held at The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast.

It’s a familiar stomping ground for PJ, originally from that neck of the woods and a new detour for Brian, who hails from Yorkshire, via Donegal and has been based in Dublin for many years now.
The exhibition continues until the 24th October.

Ormeau Baths Gallery
18a Ormeau Avenue
Belfast
BT2 8HS

Exhibition opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sunday: 1.00pm – 5.00pm

Announcing the launch of IGI member Chris Judge’s new exhibition at the Loft, Dublin on the 10th October, it’s only running for 2 days though so make sure you see it straight away. The opening night will be blast and no doubt the place to be seen.
Chris Judge is an illustrator and painter based in Dublin. For his second major exhibition Chris spent a week on Xanadu,a small planet which has since been engulfed by the now collapsed star Procyon B, sketching portraits of local inhabitants during the great exodus from the doomed planet.
Upon his to return to Earth, Chris set about painting intimate portraits of from his sketchbooks on various media. The result is 34 striking portraits of Blue Beatniks, solemn Vampires, Devils, Androids and many other colourful characters.

There will also be some beautiful hand made soft sculptures of severed heads by Ciara Brehony, Renate Henschke, Marta Bahillo based on Chris’s designs.
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Passers by on St. Stephens Green currently have the opportunity to view a pleasantly surreal piece of sporting art by IGI member Kevin McSherry.

Slinky Lad is in the running in an upcoming sale of sporting art in Adam’s auction house, one of Ireland’s premier art auction houses. The sale, in association with Goffs, will take place on Tuesday, 23rd October and will also feature works of a more classical nature. My money’s on the slinky fellow though – it’s prominent place in the window display is attracting quite a bit of interest. Adam’s is at the junction of Kildare Street and Stephens Green, just by the recently re-opened Shelbourne Hotel. So perhaps a wee snifter in the Horseshoe Bar might be in order too!

- Image by Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli)

My spies tell me there is a lecture being held in Trinity College on the 3rd of October by Mr. Nobuyuki Tsugata, a Japanese Animation Historian, entitled POWER OF JAPANESE ANIMATION.

It’s free but you need to register, so email Jenny O’Connor (Press Officer Japanese Embassy) at cultural@embjp.ie to do just that. (more…)

There’s a smashing exhibition running in the National Gallery of Ireland at the moment. Admission is free and it’s well worth a visit!

Catching a Likeness: Portraits on Paper includes a wide variety of drawings, watercolours, etchings etc. from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Idealised heads feature alongside robust interpretations, preparatory sketches, self-portraits and caricatures with modern portraits displaying a more experimental approach. It’s in the Print Gallery – which most regular visitors will know as the ‘low light’ rooms where the annual exhibit of Turner watercolours take place.

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The Economist’s new Illustration lead campaign is featured here on Creative Review, with some interesting quotes from the client “We put the lines out to the illustrators and left them to interpret them. We weren’t prescriptive. At no point did we say to them ‘can you draw us a…’ Advertising is sometimes a bit scared of working in this way but allowing the illustrators to think around a theme seemed a better way to use them. It feels more honest rather than being overly contrived.” Great example of a client trusting in their creatives. More of this please!

London Transport Museum puts over 5,000 posters online. To say its comprehensive would be an understatement but of course this means it might take you a while to trawl through the average ones. But it helps that you can browse by: theme, decade, artist.

Exhibition of work by artists from the animation industry:
GARY BLATCHFORD, PAUL BOLGER, RAFA DIAZ CANALES, GERALDINE COOPER-SHERIDAN, DES DOWNES, PAUL FOGARTY, TOM GALVIN, YVONNE HENNESSY, AIDAN HICKEY, JIMMY MURAKAMI, NIALL O’LOUGHLIN, NUALA O’TOOLE, STEPHEN ROBINSON, STEVE SIMPSON, AIDAN WALSH.
At the Kilternan Gallery, Enniskerry Road, Kilternan, Dublin 18.
Exhibition runs 28th September to 7th October and will be opened by Éamon De Buitléar, Wildlife Broadcaster. The Kilternan Gallery is on the Dublin – Enniskerry Road, at the south end of Kilternan village. Phone: 01 2955597, Email: info@kilternangallery.ie