Offset Sheffield - Saturday 22nd October 2016 - Laura Carlin

Laura Carlin is an illustrator and ceramicist based in London. Her main sources of inspiration come from books, film design and characters. Despite this, she believes that you should step out of your comfort zone every so often in terms of inspiration and style of your work, as you do not necessarily have to like a certain piece of artwork but you may be inspired from the idea behind it. Her illustrations for The Iron Man, a children's book by Ted Hughes, is ... of this belief. These illustrations include subtle differences and ideas which you have to pay close attention to notice. For example, in the book she gave the iron man a shadow and not the townspeople to show their ignorance towards the man. However by the end of the story every character has a shadow when they are finally able to accept the man for who he is. Carlin believes that illustrations like these plant seeds of imagination in the minds of children, therefore no topic is off bounds and you should not steer away from difficult subjects. Children are the harshest of critics and understand more than you think. However, for the children to be engaged with a story, the characters must be believable as a real character. Giving them small narratives in their creation gives them this essence of 'realness'. This idea can also be seen in her own book, A World of Your Own, which is aimed to encourage children to draw, create their own narratives and overall spark their imagination.