We are packing our bags and sorting our best artwork in preparation for SURTEX 2014!  This year promises to be THE BEST EVER! We have work from the top talents in the business and we are eager to share their work with YOU! Come see us in Booth 317. Contact Susan or me directly via my email or my cell: 617-299-9457 to book an appointment. – Jennifer

Example of blurb book – this one from Sarah Walsh – you won’t believe what you see when you turn the pages!

I’ve been freelancing for over seventeen years and I’ve also taught on several Illustration Degree courses – but going back to “school” this year has been a delight for me.

These projects are my responses to Lilla’s amazing online course, “Make Art That Sells”, aimed at professional illustrators and designers worldwide.

The majority of my commissioned work has always been for editorial (which is my first love!) and publishing so being challenged to create work each week for a different market – stationery, party paper, home decor etc has been wonderfully stretching. And I’m keen to carry the things I’ve learnt and new skills I’ve developed over into all sorts of projects and commissions.

– with best wishes, Trina

Scrapbooking – Vintage typewriters and cameras

Map of Famous People connected with the area around Crystal Palace

Party Paper on a Winter Folk Art Theme

Christmas Card

Trina writes in her newsletter:

“I love to draw! It should have been very obvious to me after seventeen years as a freelance illustrator. But several projects in the last six months have really brought it home to me.

A book for US publishers Quarry involving 900 drawings! It comes out next year and is called “20 Ways to Draw a Butterfly and 44 Other Things with Wings”. Also being asked by design studio Cobalt ID to produce tiny drawings “as if from a sketchbook” for a RSPB campaign. At first I didn’t believe they really wanted my untidied up, usually for my eyes only sketches – but they did!

Plus my agent (for commissions in the USA – I’m based in the UK) Lilla Rogers has been running an amazing online course called “Make Art That Sells” aimed at professional illustrators and designers worldwide. We were encouraged to draw some of our own collections – above some kitchen things and my childhood stamp collection. Once I started it was hard to stop.

Do you need any drawing? If so please contact the agents at Lilla Rogers Studio!”

Trina writes:

“This was for Rhode Island Magazine to illustrate a piece by Ann Hood. It’s was a very reflective and poignant piece of writing about Spring from early childhood memories of Easter celebrations with snow still on the ground surrounded by her extended Italian family through to the loss of family members and how it affected her ability to notice or appreciate seasonal changes through to the springtime adoption of one of her children.
I’ve also included how the illustrations looked in the magazine layout – I really like how the designer laid out the pages, the text and the flowers against the clean white pages.”

Trina writes:

“I created this for Pedlars Product of the Month Competition. The theme was to create a piece of Wall Art on the theme of Great Britain. I think this is quite a nostalgic view of Great Britain – our industries have declined, our buses and Jaguars aren’t so beautiful now and our hedgerows don’t seem so full of flowers! Though we do still have lots of deer and puffins.

Pedlars is a UK company that sell things for the home plus vintage specials every Friday.

Trina writes:

A friend’s husband asked me to produce a picture of his wife and dog.
This is the type of request that I’d normally politely decline and that I’ve managed to avoid through out my career. But I know Mercedes likes my style and has bought several prints of my work as gifts for friends plus I also LOVE drawing dogs. And Mark made it very clear he didn’t want a portrait just a “sense” of his wife and dog in my style.

I submitted three ideas – and by chance they were each in different seasons – Mark then asked me to do a set of four through the seasons so the scale of the job quadrupled making it a much more interesting project.

It gave me the opportunity to play around more with scale and composition and viewpoints.
They spend a lot of time in Norfolk and so the summer image is set on the beach there.

The only downside of the project was while I was working on it I had to avoid meeting up with Mercedes and Stanley, for our occasional walk and a coffee, as I hated the idea of having a secret even if it was a nice one!

Trina writes:

“Hi Lilla

Each month I illustrate the opinion column in the UK journal Bulletin which is the short name for The Official Magazine of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

I love illustrating for specialist and trade magazines as often the text is very dense and sometimes dry and uses language specific to it’s field…so I have to go away and look the occasional word up and find things out. I love getting a glimpse into a world that can be very known to it’s readers but new and unknown to me.

In Bulletin some of the articles are taken from research papers others are sometimes personal stories from the speech therapists or their service users. The second type tend to stay with me longer – like the one about a man with a stutter whose career advisor’s only advice was to apply for jobs that wouldn’t involve speaking….after a few years he took no notice and went on to have a very successful career (the illustration of boy on a ladder).”

Trina writes:

“Hi Lilla

I loved illustrating this book so much!

It was for Running Press and written by Meg Cox. It’s packed full of great suggestions on how to create personal family rituals and traditions – it has a really imaginative and cosy feeling text. I’ve worked as a nanny and also as an au pair many times over the years and as I drew these pictures it was amazing how many memories and wonderful days spend in the company of children came flooding back to me!

I also loved the challenge of working in two colours plus tints for the interior illustrations and as well as the forty illustrations I also produced a few repeat patterns that were used as backgrounds throughout the book.
I’ve included the two colour roughs I did for the cover.”

Trina writes:

“Front Row Society in collaboration with Anthropologie are holding a competition. The brief was to design a scarf 200cm x 65cm based on one of the four elements and the winning three will be produced and sold in the UK branches of Anthropologie and online this autumn.

You can view all the entrants here.

I don’t think I’ve ever designed anything so big before! Here are some close ups too. I chose Earth as it’s definitely the element I most connect with. I called mine “Gone to Earth” – partly after the animals that live and seek refuge underground, the idea of returning to nature and after one of my most favourite films with that name by Powell and Pressburger.”

Wow. My sublimely talented artist, Trina Dalziel, painted this based on the photos I shot (below) and posted on Facebook. Love this so much.