Only kidding, recently Kevin McSherry was was invited to give a talk about his work to illustration and animation students at Ballyfermot College. He has put a post up on his blog outlining his presentation and he doesn’t hold back on his views of the current working environment for illustrators and is full of advice for the next generation. A must read…

Never work for free. If there’s no financial gain, then negotiate some other reward, whether it’s some advertising, PR or other contra-deal that suits you. There’s often something that could be of value but it has to be negotiated from a position of your daily rate. People don’t respect work that’s given for free and many have a tendency to abuse artists who fall for this sort of bolloxology. If some bullying twit [who happens to be paid regularly by the way] suggests that being published in their magazine/newspaper/advert will be a ‘great shop window for you’ or ‘a great portfolio piece’, or an ‘in’, ask them to quantify the greatness exactly in terms of cash. If there’s no benefit at all; walk away.

For the full post go here.

Steven Heller takes an animated look through the evolution of Olympics pictogram systems, although he’s a bit harsh on poor Quatchi the sasquatch. CR Blog previously has a detailed look at the 2012 London system. Here’s a more detailed archive of previous pictogram sytems.

A very exciting project has just started at The Picture Book Report – fifteen illustrators creating a new scene from their favorite books every month, posted one per day for three weeks!

More crayons. That’s what the world needs. Solve all our problems. Although it seems it’s happening anyway, as according to ‘Crayola’s Law’, the number of colours brought out doubles every 28 years. So by the year 2050, there’ll be 330 different crayons. That’s a lot of colour choices for a 5 year old to wrap their head around.

At the NY Times Christoph Niemann illustrates his personal weather predictions for the coming year. Also, Maira Kalman finishes up her Pursuit of Happiness series with George Washington. The series will be collected in a book to be published later this year.

The UK Times has started a sketch travel blog of illustrator George Butler’s six month journey through Africa. Check it out here.

The NYTimes has compiled a great selection of Op-Ed illustrations from ‘09. Check them out here.

 
British artist Stephen Wiltshire is currently attempting to draw the Manhattan skyline from memory. Since Monday October 26th Wiltshire began filling in an 20 foot canvas at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. The drawing is expected to be completed by Friday October 30th. You can follow his progress by live webcam here.

Matt Sundstrom has created an interesting illustrated website of travel drawings from his trip driving from New Hampshire to Oregon following remnants of the old Oregon trail.

While editorial illustration may be on the decline (certainly in Ireland) and the likes of the Irish Times run ever more to the hills for cheap Getty stock illustrations to fill their pages, it’s worth noting the new digital avenues opening up for illustration. Here’s an interesting post on the iphone kids game ‘The Hidden Park‘ ; which also has exciting implications for how kids books might develop in years to come. And of course more traditional iphone games with illustration at the center like Rolando 2. One to keep an eye on.