Another Example of What Illustrations Can Do for an Art Gallery's Publicity Material

As an illus­trat­or, I am some­times asked to cre­ate pub­li­city mater­i­al for exhib­i­tions of art­work by oth­er artists. Some artists do not allow oth­er artists to use their images even for pro­mo­tion­al pur­poses. So we have to cre­ate our way around that obstacle! Inter­est­ing.

See how Miko resolved this with a pre­vi­ous gal­lery com­mis­sion on Andy War­hol.

In this case, how­ever, the art­work on exhib­it is that of an artist from the late 18^th, early 19^th cen­tury, so his copy­right is not an issue.

John Cot­man lived from 1782 to 1842 and was a won­der­ful water­col­our paint­er and etch­er, and a friend of Turn­er. He painted sea­scapes and land­scapes and recor­ded some beau­ti­ful build­ings.

You may recog­nise the name Cot­man as being a range of water­col­our products by the artist mater­i­als sup­pli­er Win­sor & New­ton .

Here is how I incor­por­ated his work into the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gal­lery's pub­li­city mater­i­al for the exhib­i­tion of his paint­ings:

[Click on any image in the gal­lery to view it as a full-size slideshow.]

For all of the illus­tra­tions, I relied on a beau­ti­ful water­col­our box of the era.

I pro­duced the first illus­tra­tion as a pen­cil sketch (the first stage of water­col­our paint­ing) with the water­col­our box lying on a field of flowers. Cotman's paint­ing of the scene is in full col­our, propped up against the box, and used again in the back­ground to depict the actu­al scene, out of focus to con­cen­trate on the fore­ground image.

The second illus­tra­tion, I cre­ated in a much sim­pler form using pen and ink, with just a few lines of grass and the corner of Cotman's paint­ing. Barely sug­ges­tions, but enough visu­al inform­a­tion that the paint­ing was car­ried out in the coun­tryside.

The third illus­tra­tion is basic­ally the same but again far sim­pler, as it is to be used as a logo through­out the gal­lery.

What do you think of the res­ults?

I thor­oughly enjoyed doing the research on John Cot­man, as I do on any artist or sub­ject. Gen­er­ally, my cli­ents already have some inform­a­tion about the sub­ject of their exhib­i­tion, so I use that togeth­er with a few inter­net searches. I have learnt over many years how to seek out the most import­ant inform­a­tion in the shortest pos­sible time.

In the mean­time, I hope you've enjoyed the illus­tra­tions I cre­ated for the John Cot­man exhib­i­tion at the Dul­wich Pic­ture Gal­lery.

And if you're look­ing for an illus­trat­or to do sim­il­ar work for your gal­lery or busi­ness, get in touch and we'll have a no oblig­a­tion chat about what I can do for you.