May 16th saw the arrival of the third Adobe Behance Portfolio Review night at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. Once again, it was hosted by Lukasz Kulakowski and featured a range of speakers including award-winning Illustrators Ireland member Peter Donnelly. The annual event brings together local creatives in cities and towns around the world to present and discuss their work through their use of the online platform Behance.

Photo © Kevin Goss-Ross 2013

“It is a great occasion to network with the local creative community” says Peter. “The crowd on the night was a brilliant mix of people coming from design, photography and illustration. The opportunity to speak and hear about how people develop their work is always fascinating and it opens communication between those working in different creative fields.”

Behance is growing strong in Ireland with many professional creatives now joining the portfolio and discussion forum as the leading way to promote their work online.

Professional Irish comic book artists Declan Shalvey (Marvel’s Thunderbolts, 28 Days Later) and Stephen Mooney (Angel, Half Past Danger) talk about their experiences in the comic book industry – everything from creator owned work to the importance of social media in getting your name out there – on the latest episode of the Comic Cast. Listen here.

Above image: front cover to issue 1 of Half Past Danger by Stephen Mooney

Artist’s Talk from 6 – 7:30 pm, Thursday 8 december 2011 at The Cooper House Gallery off Synge Street, dublin 8.

After the Revolution Illustration Competition, Fire is organising a talk with winner Steve Simpson, runner-up Kevin McSherry and finalist Mario Sughi.

Not to be missed.

Here’s two recently posted videos on Vimeo from the 2009 Offset event of presentations by Illustrators James Jean and PJ Lynch.

This Wednesday sees the opening of a very exciting show of the work of Cor Klaasen, curated by Niall McCormack from the fantastic Hi-Tone Blog.

Cor Klaasen: Jackets, Covers & Sleeves

Venue: Adifferentkettleoffishaltogether, 18 Ormond Quay Upper

Times: Daily 11 – 5pm. Thurs 4 – Wed 10 November inclusive

Opening: Wednesday 3 November, 2010, 6 – 8 pm. Guest Speaker: Brian Lalor

Niall will be giving a talk about Klaasen at OFFSHOOT 4 in The Sugar Club on Thursday this week from 7Pm.

These are some of the OFFSET experiences from two of Illustrators Ireland (IGI) members: David McClellan and Margaret Anne Suggs
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In early July IGI member, Steve Simpson, travelled from Dublin to sunny California for the biennial US illustration conference, ICON. Here’s his diary from the event:

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When we drew up the inaugural wish list of speakers for OFFSET I knew the first person I wanted to invite was Dave McKean. So it was a great thrill and honour when he said ‘YES’. We have uploaded the video of his presentation which is available for your enjoyment. So…enjoy.

Dave McKean has illustrated many award winning comics and books, including the incredible covers for the entire award-winning Sandman comic series, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook (Heston Blumenthal), What’s Welsh For Zen (John Cale), Varjak Paw (SF Said), The Savage (David Almond), Arkham Asylum (Grant Morrison), The Homecoming (Ray Bradbury), Wizard and Glass (Stephen King), The Graveyard Book, Wolves in the Walls, Coraline, Mr. Punch, Signal to Noise and Crazy Hair (all by Neil Gaiman).

Oliver Jeffers makes art. From figurative painting and installation to illustration and picture-book making, his work has been exhibited and published in New York, Dublin, London, Sydney, Washington DC, Belfast and elsewhere. His picture books, including Lost and Found, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, and most recently, The Great Paper Caper. Oliver was brought up in Northern Ireland and now lives and works in Brooklyn (hence the mustache!).

Enjoy this talk from OFFSET last year and don’t miss out this year by getting your ticket now!

We are delighted to say that following last years successful conference OFFSET is back and its even bigger and better! This year OFFSET is taking place from 1-3 October in the amazing Grand Canal Theatre. The full and very diverse line up is now online at www.iloveoffset.com but notable inclusions from the world of Illustration are Gary Baseman, Nate Williams, Emily Forgot, Tomer Hanuka, Alan Clarke, Martin Haake and art director and author of many, many books on illustration – Steven Heller.

Images after the bump…

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