Eighteenth Century Work in London: A Guide

Until recently these characters were little more than doodles in an old sketchbook I had.  Upon their rediscovery, I decided to give them a bit of a makeover and let them see the light of day.

And here are the results!

From 5pm on Sunday 16th of June 2019 all of these items will be available to purchase as postcards, prints and concertina books.

Visit joannarobsonillustration.bigcartel.com to see the full collection.

The Astrologer Kings

Above and below is some artwork I have recently finished and would like to share here.  These images have been in the pipeline for a while now and after some thought and a bit of experimentation, I have decided to reproduce them as limited edition risograph prints.

Scroll down to see the collection!

All of these images have been inspired by reading The Errant Astrologers by Felipe Benitez Reyes.  They are illustrations that I have been working on intermittently and have only recently got round to making risograph prints out of many of them.  

The play is rich with nonsensical imagery: three astrologer monarchs from different kingdoms find themselves lost together in a desert at night, while trying to follow the same star.  It's a text with themes in it that I find myself returning to a lot in my artwork.  

All featured prints are available through my online store at the link below:

https://joannarobsonillustration.bigcartel.com

Thank you for reading!  
You can see more regular updates of my work over on my Instagram account at instagram.com/joannakrobson.

The Ambassador's Ball

New artists' book ready to be editioned!  

Twenty copies of The Ambassador's Ball are being created and will be available to purchase through my online shop.  

Inspired by a real event, this lasercut concertina book illustrates how I imagine the Spring Festival on 24th April 1935 at the US embassy in Moscow might have unfolded.  

And why choose this particular event?  The level of chaos at this party would not have been out of place in a Marx Brothers film: in a bid to impress their Soviet hosts, the US embassy staff threw an outlandish party, a party that aimed to surpass any other embassy party in Moscow's history.  Guests arrived to discover that the neo-classical embassy of Spaso House had been transformed: decorations included birch trees in the chandelier room; an orchestra from Prague; flowers from Helsinki; a sword dancer from Tblisi; and numerous live animals including over one hundred finches, pheasants, roosters, goats and a baby bear.

Spaso House, Residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow

The animals caused an uproar – the unhousebroken bear was introduced to champagne and ruined a Soviet general’s uniform, while hundreds of finches escaped their aviary and flew noisily about the high ceilinged rooms during the party and for some days after.

One of the guests at the party was the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov.  The fantastic and surreal imagery of this party was not lost on him, ensuring that the legacy of the party was to live on beyond that night.  Bulgakov went on to use the party as inspiration for a famous scene in his novel The Master and Margarita.  Satan’s Ball (or the Spring Ball of the Full Moon) in Bulgakov’s novel features a number of barely disguised parallels with the Spring Festival of 1935.

Something about the chaos of this event against the backdrop of such an elegant neo-classical building caught my imagination last summer, and I set to work.

The finished book is a panorama of lasercut scenes against a white embossed background.  References to The Master and Margarita are dotted throughout the book, including one giant black cat and an embossed cascade of playing cards hidden in the building's ceiling.  

Below are some of my favourite photos of the book as well as a quote from one of the party's organisers...

I'm currently taking orders for copies of The Ambassador's Ball, so if you'd like to purchase one, please contact me through my online shop in the tab at the top.  Each copy of The Ambassador's Ball is £350 plus p&p.

Alternatively if you're based in or around Edinburgh, you can come and have a look at a copy for yourself at my table at the Fruitmarket's Artists' BookMarket on the weekend of the 17th and 18th of February.  (For more information please visit www.fruitmarket.co.uk/event/artists-bookmarket. )

Thanks for looking!

A Knavish Lad: display case and booklet

Eighteen months ago I created the largest artists' book I've made to date to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was visually narrated, using a combination of etchings and laser cuts to illustrate the entire play.  Since then all seven books in the edition have been completed, two of them have been sold, and plans are afoot to make the remaining copies available for purchase online.

Each new copy now comes with a clam-shell display box and a short booklet, which gives a bit of extra information about how the book was created and the ideas that informed it.  I'm really impressed with the sturdy and attractive dark blue clam-shall boxes that the Sullivan Bindery made for me and I would definitely recommend them if you're looking for something similar.  Below are some pictures of the book with its new display box and the booklet:

'Cupid is a knavish lad

Thus to make poor females mad'

 - Puck                                               

Nylmah excerpt - available to buy online now

Occasionally the laser cutter messes up while it's cutting and I'm unable to use whole pieces for books. Here's an example of a small area of a damaged Nylmah that I managed to save - it encapsulates the story well and it also works as a stand alone piece.

This is a unique, one-off piece and is currently available on my online shop at http://joannarobsonillustration.bigcartel.com/product/nylmah-exclusive-excerpt-piece

Update - this item has now sold!

A walk through A Midsummer Night's Dream

For those who didn't get to see the largest concertina book I've ever created at McNaughtan's Bookshop and Gallery in Edinburgh last summer, here's a short one minute video of it from beginning to end:

A higher resolution of this video is available at https://vimeo.com/202385480.

Only seven copies of this book will be made (eight including the display copy featured in this video).

Each copy in the edition is priced at £1,950.

There are just five copies are currently available.  If you are interested in purchasing one of them, or would like to ask any questions about it, please contact me through http://joannarobsonillustration.bigcartel.com/contact

I hope you enjoy this short video and thank you for looking!

A Knavish Lad: artwork from the exhibition

My exhibition A Knavish Lad featured the largest piece of book art I've created to date: a wordless, visual retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Today I thought it was time to give a bit of space on this blog to the other pieces of artwork from the exhibition, as there was so much etching involved!

Photos of above prints are taken from http://www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/news/midsummer-night-enchantments

The first few etchings taken from the plates after aquatinting them came out so well that I decided to create a small limited edition of nine from each of them.  Each of these prints has been printed in black intaglio ink on Hahnemuhle paper.  They were the first prints taken on the plates after the aquatint had been scrubbed off, and the tonality on them is wonderful - none of the colour prints I subsequently took from these plates seem to match up to the contrast achieved on these first monochrome prints:

Inking up and removing ink from the zinc plate with scrim

Running plate through press

first proof from the second plate

It took over two years to build up enough visual material for this project.  Research for it took me in to the woods of Northumberland's National Park with a sketchbook; to pouring over Victorian flower dictionaries; and to looking up indigenous costumes and headdresses of far off places. The Beltane Fire Society was consulted for their library of books on costume, and there were numerous conversations with a certain English teacher on the text and the characters.

'Methought a serpent eat my heart away'

The text's imagery informed a lot of detail in the etchings, especially in regard to animals, flowers and plants.  For instance in the scene when Hermia awakens, she speaks of a dream where a serpent had devoured her heart, and a small reference is made to this in the bottom right hand corner of the second print.  (An apple was substituted for a heart.)

Act I Scene I

The Roman gods Diana and Cupid are referenced many times in the play, and especially in the opening scene.  I didn't want to include them as characters anywhere in the etchings, as I felt that it would look too obvious.  Each of them appears in the opening scene as a laser-cut silhouetted statue, looking on while Helena sits alone underneath.

Puck closes the play by addressing the audience directly - the only character in the play to do so.  As a result I let him be the only character who makes direct eye contact with the viewer.

I could go on about the characters for longer, but I won't do it here.  However I can't finish this post without talking a bit about one of the most central characters, the instigator of the play's magic and mayhem...

Oberon, one of two prints 

Etched illustration on zinc plate

Above is a separate character portrait I created of Oberon.  He thieves like a magpie; he acts out of jealousy; and (believes himself to be) a cuckold.  I imagine that he is the sort of character who might have a collection of stolen, shiny objects in his possession, which is why magpies became his motif and they appear in a couple of Oberon's scenes:

These last few framed etchings in the exhibition are my favourites.  They are also very precious because they cannot be printed again, thanks to a series of accidents in the print room with the plates.  Only a few copies of each print available:

Oberon; one of two prints

Etching of Bottom and Queen Titania; one of two prints

One-off etching 

The exhibition A Knavish Lad is on at McNaughtan's Bookshop and Gallery in Edinburgh until Friday 30th September 2016.

If you'd like to know more about any of the artwork or have questions about any of it, then drop me an email or leave a message in the comments section below!