The London Illustration Fair

I spent Saturday browsing the stalls and wishing I had enough walls to hang some of the beautiful things that I saw. Although I am enjoying my drawing studies illustration is my first love and it was inspiring to see the work on display. I bought a copy of this print by Robert James Clarke, so loose but so accurate, I'm in awe and I'm very critical of animal (particularly canine) art. There were a lot of animal illustrations, Ben Rotary's Birds on a Wire series stood out for me, it's not the first time I've seen this linear arrangement of birds, it's an obvious device that works well, but I particularly like the quality of the drawings and the liveliness of the layout. Ros Shiers also does dog drawings in black and white. I'm a bit scared of black and white, it's what I do from choice, for me, but I feel the rest of the world wants some colour for their money. There's nowhere to hide if you're working in black and white and I like that, the drawing has to stand up on it's own. Maybe I need to be more bold and stick with my pencil drawings. (I also like her simple, clean, modern, typographic cards and posters) Mister Peebles is the full colour experience with well observed, believable underlying drawings and gentle puns. Less representational is the work of Nikki Strange which is highly coloured but still with a natural plant/wildlife theme. I'm interested in the drawing workshops and ideas of Camino Studio there is a lot of interesting projects and ideas on their website. It's not illustration or drawing but Anna Wiscombe was selling some beautiful wooden Christmas Wreaths and flowers and lovely wooden earrings.
The Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf is a brilliant venue for an arts event. It's crumbling walls (I'm sure they're structurally sound - its just the surface) covered with tiles and fading and peeling paint and it's old bricks are beautiful in their own right and make a good backdrop for prints and it doesn't matter what is hung on the walls or how it's attached. There are views over to the London Eye and the blue and white lights of the Christmas decorations on the South Embankment which made me feel quite Christmassy.

I couldn't quite capture the lights as I was making the smallholder who isn't in this photo very uncomfortable taking the photo but you get the drift.

I had discussions with my tutor about my composition for Assignment 5 of Drawing 1 and I was interested to note that a lot of the illustrators used plain (mostly white) backgrounds and centrally placed images. Are they responding to customer preferences, are they missing an opportunity to make their work more lively or is it just a current fashion and style will move on?