The House of Illustration, Quentin Blake exhibition 25/07/2019

I had booked to go and see the Quentin Blake exhibition at the House of Illustration in London, also at the gallery was the Posy Simmond’s exhibition and the Marie Neurath exhibition.

We were not allowed to take photographs in the gallery so I have looked the illustrations up after woods and found a few. The exhibition was not big it had 3 small collections from books within it. Taking up just a small room.

The Blake exhibition started with his newest book which is due out on 08/08/2019, it is a wordless book with just Blake’s illustrations running through it, so it is for your own thoughts and feelings on what is going in the book. It’s called ‘The mouse on the tricycle’.

It was a very simple book, with just pen and ink illustrations within it in Black and white, there was no colour at all. There was a mock up of the book available to flick through; it was done on what felt like eco paper, it had small flecks in it. The mock up reflected the feel of the illustrations in there simplicity. Blake’s idea behind the book was of a small mouse on a tricycle riding along and the reactions he would get from people to see this fanciful sight!

I loved the idea behind this book, I loved that it had no words and it was up to the child’s imagination to explore the illustrations. I thought it was good for all ages as it required no reading.

The way Blake illustrates is with an ink pen, he sometimes adds watercolours after to give colour or atmosphere. He has jaggedness to his style, which gives the illustrations energy. The characters have pointy faces and fingers, some of the characters lack details in their hands, but the suggestions the marks make in his illustrations are like hands anyway, so you don’t notice things like these.

There were a few illustrations from the ‘World of hats’ book in the exhibition.

I love Blake’s imagination, a book full of wacky, fanciful, exotic hats that strange people might wear. This illustration shows the crocodile hat this man is wearing! Some of these illustrations had washes of colour on them, using watercolour. The ink was used with a quill on this occasion, which is how he got the thicker lines.

‘Angel Pavements’ another book Blake had written and illustrated himself, I loved the use of medium in this book, although we only got to see 2 of the illustrations from the book, they were on large sketch pages, so you could see the details more. Blake had used a great pencil which was multi coloured, so as he sketched it changed colour, to me this added to the magic of this book.

The book was about a street artist that created these characters by drawing on the pavement, he wanted to take part in a drawing competition but didn’t know how the judges would get to see his work, so two girls Corky and Loopy gave the man a special multi coloured pencil, the drawings then came to life and Blake captured what amazing adventures happened after that.

One of his collaborations with John Ruskin ‘The king of the golden river’ was also available to see, with a few of Blake’s illustrations (above).

I loved these illustrations as they had a lot of atmosphere about them; the colours he chose in the watercolour paint really captured the feeling and the drama from the book. There was a lot of scenery, with dramatic mountains, cliff’s and gully’s, With his unusual style in using the pen and ink in a jagged way really helped to get the feeling of the jagged mountains and rocks.

Another illustration avaialbe to view, and one of Blake’s books that we could flick through and look at.

I found Blake’s way of watercolour painting similar to my own, it is my favourite way to paint and Blake’s too. I like the translucent quality of the paint and how you can add colour but in a subtle way. I think you can create great atmospheres and feelings with watercolour too, you can use washes which give great effects. You can add lots of water to the paint which creates pools and again unusual effects.

Although I don’t use pen and ink like Blake, it is something that I’m interested in and exploring in my next sketch books. I feel you can create characters or pictures/illustrations with a feeling of what you want to show, without all the detail, which sometimes is unnecessary.

Having grown up with Roald Dahl books, I have always been aware of Quentin Blake’s illustrations, I have learnt more about Quentin Blake in his own right, and some of the amazing and funny books he has both written and illustrated himself.