blog.

30.06.09.

Illustrating Introducing Statistics

I ran into the author of 'Introducing Statistics', Eileen Magnello, at an Icon meeting last autumn. She expressed enthusiasm for my work and since then the illustrator she had been working with on 'Statistics' had to pull out. The fifty-or-so pages already completed as screen images on a pdf file formed the basis of my first run at this book. I used the existing layouts and made them my own in terms of different portraits, illustrations and collages.

I should mention at this point that I work in a very old-fashioned, hands-on method. I always use the computer for what its best at: text formatting, typography, image research/manipulation and so on. But I like to work with my hands and I could never stare at the cathode ray tube screen for so long. Working in conventional paste-up gives me restrictions not experienced by those using software applications, but it also frees me to be a bit rawer and more expressive in the finished page artwork. The danger of using pure computer power to make pages - and this is in no way a criticism of my fellow designers and illustrators - is that they all tend to have a similar look. Sausage-machine books are liked by publishers because they are 'all the same', but disliked by the readers for the same reason.

Working as speedily as possible (with the deadline very much in mind) I put together the redone pages, then identified gaps and filled them in as much as possible, save for several graphs and diagrams needed from the author. A first meeting with Eileen and Duncan, my editor, has just taken place and we reviewed existing 'new' pages - I'm pleased to say that these met with approval and went through the whole text with a view to identifying possible visual approaches.

A couple of establishing shots of parts of my extensive suite of studio spaces. This one shows the typical illustrator's kit of the eighties: sloping lightbox with parallel motion (cost me a fortune at the time), pens, pencils inks knives scissors and so on, sound system for Radio 4, John Peel, Andy Kershaw, Mark Radcliffe addiction, overhead daylight spots (additional to the large east window to the left), framed picture by my daughter, hanging mobile of DNA double helix, Bart Dickon portrait (my hero), hand-painted mask, diary, Leighton's 'Flaming June' (Not sadly, the original painting, but a postcard) and loads of bits of information.

Ah, yes, my coat of many cupboards containing all the gubbins I still use from time to time: guache, inks, canvass primer, oils, varnishes, computer screen cleaner, French curves, spare lighting tubes, old bits of equipment I've forgotten the use for. And on the outside it's clothed in visual stimulation for the jaded illustrator. Spot the obscurities and the masters.



The Artist At Work (sssshhhhhh...). Beside the bank of cassette tapes I listen to my daughter's latest demo as I do a search of Google Images for some cove called Quetelet, for page 62. What did we do before internet searches? My bible was the ancient (1920s?) set of Harmsworth's illustrated encyclopedias at the Ipswich Central Library. Until I got there one day and they'd withdrawn it. Buggers then offered to sell it to me and it's been in my studio ever since. Tiny thumbnail halftones of obscure Russian philosophers and old masters. Lovely.

There is a range of Quetelets, old and young - French statistician:



I sit and draw the enlarged young Quetelet _ I've already done him as an old codger:



Then use the lightbox to render in black ink with a sable brush:



While that dries I sort out the main body of text and format to Helvetica 13/16, just like in the first ever of these books I worked on in 1979: 'Capitalism for Beginners' for Writers & Readers Publishing Co-op.



Importing the text into Illustrator to make speech balloons. All are printed out when I have a sheetful:



Time for the 'scissors and paste'. Spray gluing in my bespoke spray booth - the adjoining loo:



Turning back to complete the somewhat florid portrait of Quetelet with dip-pen hatching. Captain Beefheart's 'Gimme dat harp, boy' fills the audio air:



Putting it all together with additional female figures from the 1920s (blissfully copyright-free). It's 'Beetle bones and smokin' stones' now. The final touch is the folio (page number) which I've decided to do by hand with dip-pen in this book, to distinguish it from other 'Introducing' books:



The finished paste-up of 'Quetelismus':


 
I'll have to tell you about scanning and saving the whole lot as a pdf file another time.

Borin Van Loon