THUNDERY rain is pounding on the roof of The Ark, appropriately enough but nothing can deflect the intense concentration of the group of eight-year-olds huddled on the floor. They're being guided through an exhibition of original illustrations for children's books by leading illustrators from all over the world, which demonstrates the diversity and wealth of talent among artists in this field.
Gaining in confidence as their aesthetic sense is awakened, the children select images that convey mood, character or dramatic incident, and speculate about the stories which they illustrate, which are not shown. "It's a fish at the bottom of the world," one child explains to Dolores O'Donnell of The Ark, pointing at an illustration by Amanda Hall of a spotted and striped snake. "I could do that," her friend sniffs. "I do this stuff at home all the time." Publishers take note.
Later she had a chance to display her talents, when the Irish illustrator, Nicola Emoe, gave a demonstration of her working methods to the group and showed them how to print on to white card, using cut-out sponges and paints. This was one of a series of workshops running over five consecutive weekends at The Ark, given by Emoe, Will Simpson, Mike Con nor, Gillian Reidy, Jole Bortoli and Siobhan Griffin, to accompany the exhibition and offer children an insight into the way an illustrator responds to the text.
Both Emoe's and Will Simpson's workshops described how illustrations are created, from initial idea, to the choice of medium, use of colour, composition, and positioning of detail. Trained in Belfast and now living on the Antrim coast, Will Simpson has won an enormous following for his comic and fantasy illustrations, from Batman to Judge Dread and at his workshop a group of 11-to 13-year-old boys (mainly) hung on to his words, asking specific and knowledgeable questions about their favourite comic characters.
As a respite from comics, Simpson is currently working on a series of more gentle, romantic images based on the legends of the Holy Grail, for a French graphic novel. "I'm enjoying working for French publishers," he says. "They have such a different attitude to illustrations. They treat them as art works in their own right, not some afterthought."
This question of the relationship between illustrations and text in an illustrated book inevitably arose at the evening seminars, held by children's publishing professionals in conjunction with the exhibition. Despite the current flowering of children's publishing, with its emphasis on eye-catching design, ours is primarily a language-oriented culture, which tends to privilege the written word and use verbal reasoning as a yardstick for children's intellectual development.
Of course, there is no reason for the two media to be in competition; while the illustrations are necessarily dependent on the text for their initial stimulus, and are required to have a narrative and communicative function, what they provide is another, parallel reading, which recreates the fictional world of the text in highly imaginative ways.
Geoff Fox, a children's book specialist from Exeter University who spoke at one of the seminars, stressed the importance of encouraging children to "read the pictures" as well as the text. He compared the process to that of teaching literature students how to read a poem - tracing the imagery, referring back to earlier pictures, slowly studying all the elements to discover the secret clues left by the artist.
"The award-winning Irish illustrator, P.J. Lynch, presented slides of his work, explaining how he tried to show scenes in his illustrations which were not described in the text, so that the text is extended by the images. He was full of admiration for a lot of the work on exhibit, but found it difficult to evaluate the success of the illustrations without seeing their accompanying texts.
"Some of these are technically wonderful and sophisticated but leave me cold," he says. "I also think that they might appeal to adults more than children." From a shortlist of about a dozen illustrations, he selected his favourite: a scene from Arthus Und Excalibur (centre, right) by the Bulgarian illustrator, Iassen Ghiuselev.
"It's gorgeous, technically wonderful, mysterious, with sinister overtones. There's tremendous control but it's not slavishly photographic." And isn't it notably similar to some of his own work? "Well, I wish I had done this," he laughs. "but I'd never manage to be quite so subtle..."
