Where have all the book illustrators gone? The Independent.

Where have all the book illustrators gone? An article from the newspaper The Independent.

This article discusses the reasons for the lack of illustrated adult novels in the last half a century  It includes controversial opinions like a lack of decent illustrators and introduces the rise of the inner monologue.


'Up until the Fifties and Sixties it wouldn't be unusual for a mainstream publisher to illustrate adult books. '

'Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape is one of the few British publishers who bucks the trend. "I think a) it's fashion", he says trenchantly. "And b) there aren't that many great illustrators. It's rare you can come across someone who can draw. Even when you're looking for someone to do book jackets, it's hard to find someone who can draw the human figure – it seems to be unfashionable now."

I fully agree with the fashionability of illustration in books being key to its disappearance but the opinion that 'there aren't that many great illustrators' is, I think, another example of fashion. Why do illustrators have to draw the characters to represent what is occurring in the text?

Simon Prosser, publishing director at Hamish Hamilton: It might be", he says, "that illustration is simply unfashionable. I have a strong, deep attachment to books that were illustrated... I remember from my early reading, the classics of natural history, like Izaak Walton and The Natural History of Selborne and they were all illustrated." Which brings us to another issue, the dearth of publishers with some sort of visual grounding.

Does it matter if adult books are all text? Even the greatest enthusiasts wouldn't say you should illustrate everything. You wouldn't wish on any artist the job of drawing much of Virginia Woolf. But the possibility that illustrations could actually illumine writing and draw out elements of a narrative doesn't seem to count for much any more. And as Posy Simmonds, well-known as a graphic novelist as well as illustrator, observes, illustration can do many things for a novel: "There's lots of choice, whether to interpret, decorate, contradict. It can add to or detract from the writing."

On the change in modern literature:

But there is a problem with the nature of modern fiction. As the novelist Piers Paul Read says, "illustrations are best suited to a novel with a strong narrative, that is to say, illustrating an incident – and there are fewer such novels around.

He (Quentin Blake) thinks that the nature of modern fiction is a challenge, but not an insuperable one. "Once novelists got into the interior monologue... that's what spoiled it for illustration", he says. "But there are things you could do that we've lost the habit of doing. There's a wrong assumption that you're going to draw exactly what the text says. But it calls for a bit of thinking. You don't always want to see what the protagonist looks like. Are you drawing surroundings, atmosphere, furniture? There are ways of contributing to novels. Commissioning drawing, I think, is a habit as much as anything. One doesn't want to say everything should be illustrated. But there are moments when something very interesting could be done. We've lost the habit of thinking like that."

The perception of illustration in books as something for children:

Because illustration is now the preserve of children's books, there's a sense that this is where it belongs, with childish things like comics. Or as Quentin Blake says, "there's a feeling it's not quite grown up to have pictures." Posy Simmonds agrees: "there's a sense that pictures are something you grow out of."

On The Resurgance of the illustrated book in the digital platform:

But it's not too soon to write off the possibility of illustration making a return. And curiously enough, it comes from the very development that people darkly assume to be undermining publishing as we know it: digital technology. Kindle makes the reproduction of colour plates far cheaper than now. As Simon Rossiter observes: "Books are more and more in the digital world – there's a real case for making books more special... it would be great to have a special Kindle edition of a novel." Dan Franklin is even more upbeat: "We'll find in the years to come that there's a renewal of illustration in books. Because of Kindle there's a new impulse to make the physical hardback book a more beautiful object. Illustration will be part of that. And when the enhanced e-book is up and running, it will be part of that too."

Folio Society

While most contemporary books on the best-sellers shelf in Waterstones are no longer illustrated there are still sources that publish and sell novels that pride themselves on their inclusion of illustration and the quality of their books.
The folio society, publishing for over 50 years now, strives to create beautiful books that enhance their readers pleasure through its binding and illustrations.

Folio Society, about us:
Great books should be outstanding not only in literary content but also in their physical form: this has been the philosophy of The Folio Society since it was founded in 1947 by Charles Ede, with a dream of publishing beautiful books that would be affordable to everyone. Our pleasure in reading is enhanced by the book itself, in which typography, illustration, paper, printing and binding all play a part in creating a harmonious whole. In a world of declining publishing standards, where most books are cheaply printed, and bound using low-grade materials, The Folio Society resolutely sets store by traditional values of excellence; for our designers and production personnel the term 'quite good' means 'no good': only the best is good enough.

In our 64-year history, Folio has published an astonishing range of works; from Moby-Dick to Pather Panchali, and from the Qur’ân to Kerouac’s On The Road. The quality of our books as tactile and aesthetic objects has been a constant hallmark, but members have long looked beyond our exceptional covers, to the standards we uphold for each and every text. From introducers who make up the great names of modern literature and academia, and editors and picture researchers who ensure unrivalled standards of research and textual work, to our artists who have swept the board in so many illustrations awards – Folio offers a complete experience for the book-lover.
Source

That the folio society curate their illustrators and do not publish new works aside, their view that the physical form of a book influences that which is read is key. While there is nothing wrong with a well read water-damaged paperback that may enhance and change the feel when it is read, the folio society strive to produce books of quality, that feel 'special' and 'unique' when read. The reading experience is instantly changed by the mere look of the book: hardback, clothbound and on quality paper. I feel it sets the standard for the text very high, and perhaps works in influencing our 'experience' as a 'good read'.

Here Quentin Blake talks of his experience working with the Folio Society:

Part 2:
In this second part of the interview Blake talks about the 'rise of the inner monologue  a subject that I want to look at it much bigger detail later on!)

Each year the Folio Society run an international competition to illustrate one of its books. I'll be entering this competition working from the text chosen, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I think that my own proccess will be intresting and important to examine given the amount of research I've done in the subject, and so I'll be posting my thoughts and progress on this blog. I fully expect it to be monumentaly difficult as apose to deconstructing other illustrators work,(lots of hypocrasy on my part I'm sure!) but that it will be an invaluable insight into the mind of the book illustrator.

Dahl & Blake

Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake

Its is not often that you hear Roald Dahls name used without the mention of his close friend and illustrator Quentin Blake, such is the iconicness of their relationship and of their visual 'brand'.

What is interesting in this pairing is the complete trust and intuitiveness with which both artist and writer viewed each others work.
"While working on the BFG in 1982, Dahl even altered his own written description of the friendly giant so it fitted with some of the drawings Blake had already made. In the storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, Donald Sturrock says that Blake was able to almost intuit what Dahl's characters would look like. "Quentin began to realise just how precisely Roald imagined his stories," he writes, "Initially, Dahl had described his character wearing a black hat, apron and large black boots. But when Roald saw Quentin's drawing, he knew at once that the giant needed to look softer and more loveable."

That Dahl changed his narrative after seeing Blake's illustrations in key in discussing how a relationship like this works and that unlike many re-illustrated volumes, illustration had an equal position to the writing:  "Dahl was adamant that his text be full of illustrations, "What was so nice about Roald was that he actually wanted the pictures," Blake recalls on his website. "He didn't like it if there weren't enough."
While this is unfortunately very unique of authors (and more frequent in children's literature) it shows that the narrative and illustrations were intended to be read together, in a single discourse.

Blake on illustrating:
"Blake's job was to convey their many unappealing traits in pictures. (the Twits)
Early on in the story, Dahl describes Mr Twit's beard as being lodged with bits of decaying food. Conveying this in a single portrait image was difficult  so Blake drew a 'magnifying glass' as an in-set illustration, which zoomed in on the hairs and the morsels of sardines, cornflakes and gorgonzola contained within.  It was he says, a question of "how do you enlarge the text slightly, without contradicting it?" Blake added further visual elements too which, while not taken directly from Dahl's text, were pitched as if they were."
An example of extending the narrative, mainly through disgust. Blake could have chosen to draw a portrait of the man purely as a representation of what is written, instead he gives us this close up which acts to heighten our dislike of a foul man through its stomach turning imagery. (Which kids love!)

Quentin Blake on Illustrating The Twits.

Like the collaborations between Thompson and Steadman a brand has been created with the style, typography and interactions between text and image. Both artists are synonymous with each others work.


Blake on his process and collaboration