Burton in Space

Jonathan Burton, the extremely talented illustrator and designer who I interviewed here, has a number of cool things coming up (next year, for example, he has redesigns of some of the Kingsley Amis backlist for Penguin Classics--pictures to come when I get them). Most recently, there is his work on the Folio Society's new edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This book, and its first three sequels, were like catnip to me when I was a kid--I read my copies almost literally into pieces, to the point where I can't reread them now for fear that both the prose and the physical books won't hold up.


Here's Burton's cover: Marvin the paranoid android  in holographic ink, glittered cloth and embossing...

And here are some of his wonderful interior illustrations.

For more, see Jonathan's blog and site.

Etchings of Wrestlers and Bearded Men: An Interview with Nick Morley

Nick Morley is a London-based artist who has a particular talent with linocuts and etchings. As well as exhibiting widely around the world, he has recently entered the world of book design, working with several publishers to create eye-catching and beautiful books. He was kind enough to agree to be interviewed.

'T-Rex with a handbag', one of Nick's limited-edition linocut prints

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CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: What's your background as an artist--how did you end up where you are today?

NICK MORLEY: I studied Fine Art at university in Sheffield (in the North of England) and was making paintings, drawings and little performance pieces.  After graduating I lived in Vancouver, Canada for a year scooping ice-cream and making bad art.  Then I moved to London and started working as a gallery technician in some prestigious contemporary art galleries and got kind of swept up by the whole thing and wanted to be a famous artist.  I couldn't afford a studio of my own so I started making prints, going to various printmaking studios where I could work in a concentrated way for short periods of time in between working.  Eventually I joined East London Printmakers, and I've been making etchings, linocuts and screenprints for about ten years now.  All my work is very much based in drawing and printmaking definitely lends itself brilliantly to working this way.

A proposed cover for the Vintage Classics Jane Eyre: on the left is the final linocut print, and on the right a draft rough.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: How did you first come to do book design work? Do you see it becoming a bigger part of your work in the future?

NICK MORLEY: I started to realise that the way I worked was quite suited to illustration.  A lot of my personal work was portraiture and I'd made these etchings of wrestlers and bearded men.  I was selling them at a Christmas fair and this woman bought a few.

It turned out she worked for Penguin Books so I got her card and kept in contact.  A year or so later she commissioned me for a book cover for Albert Jack's Ten-Minute Mysteries.  I had to do an illustration of an elephant swimming with its trunk out of the water to look like the Loch Ness Monster.  The first illustration I did was rejected and I had to start over.  Luckily they liked the second image and it was used on the book cover.

I've done four published book covers now and I'd definitely like to do more.  It's such a buzz seeing your work in the bookshops.  I've been very lucky that I've already done work for Penguin, Faber and Faber and The Folio Society.  My illustration for Folio was a portrait of Gandhi for his autobiography.  It was block printed onto a canvas cover which was great because it closely related to the way I made the image as a linocut.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: Are linocuts still your favourite medium in which to work?

NICK MORLEY: I do love linocut.  I think it is much underestimated as a technique.  You can achieve very fine detail and subtle textures.  There is always a trace of the artist's hand too, which is so rare in a lot of computer-generated work.  I've kind of created a brand called Linocutboy and I try to promote the medium as much as I can.  I teach linocut workshops and have a blog where I show my favourite finds by other artists and have step-by-step explanations of my own work and how I develop it.  I also make etchings and screenprints and I draw a lot with a brush-pen and crayons.  My drawings are very free and fast as an antidote to the rather slower processes of printmaking.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: Linocut artwork seems to be making a comeback in book design, and Lynd Ward is even being included in the Library of America collections. What do you think are its advantages in illustration?

NICK MORLEY: There is a link with history that is very strong.  The first illustrations were woodcuts, which is basically the same technique.  I think that when you make a multi-layered print by hand you gain an understanding of how a printed image is put together, how colours can be laid over one another to create new colours and how everything fits together.  You learn to simplify things and I think this is key to book cover design, it's about making an arresting image that the eye can read quickly.  The boldness of the line also makes for a graphic quality which works well with text.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: If you could design, inside and out, without budget limitations, any book from the history of literature, what would it be?

NICK MORLEY: Well, I've already made a little book which I designed inside and out based on Aesop's Fables.  It's called The Lion and The Ox and The Boar and The Bear.  It has illustrations of the front and back ends of animals which you can fit together in different combinations depending on how you open the book.  The text can also be read in a number of combinations, creating nonsense stories.
 

I'm really interested in taking this further and I've been thinking about pop-up books and books that are structurally playful.  I read a lot of children's books and I'd love to have a go at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.  I think the inventiveness of Willy Wonka's creations would work well with a format where things moved and spun and grew and changed colour!  I'd use thermodynamic ink, scratch and sniff... Mmm, you've got my juices flowing now.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: Is there any neglected book you'd love to draw to people's attention as something they should seek out?

NICK MORLEY: Not really one book, but a concept. My friend Victoria Browne runs a great project for artist's books called Kaleid Editions. She published my Aesop's Fables book. She's worked with a lot of great artists who are really pushing the boundaries of what a book can be. Some of the ideas may take a while to catch on in the mainstream publishing industry but I think it's important to do something experimental every now and then to keep the imagination ticking over.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: Thank you, Mr Morley!

Niroot Puttapipat's Russian Legends

Having only just discovered the artwork of Thai-born, london-based Niroot Puttapipat, it must be shared! I encountered it first via the Folio Society's Myths and Legends of Russia, by Aleksandr Afanas’e.

See the rest of the illustrations here, and Puttapipat's artwork for Jane Austen here, for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám here, for Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book here, and for much else here. It's beautiful work, with a delicacy of touch and incredible intricacy that really appeals. The coloured work at those links reminds me of the best of Arthur Rackham, while the Russian legends shown above have the same beautiful and sinister appeal as the work of Vania Zouravliov's, whose cover for Vintage's edition of the Grimms' Fairy Tales I love.

Jump into the World of the Story and Rummage Around: An Interview with Jonathan Burton

Jonathan Burton is an extremely talented illustrator who recently completed designed and  illustrating the Folio Society edition of PD James's Cover Her Face. He was kind enough to agree to be interviewed about this project, his own history, and his ambitions. You can see more of his work at his website and at his blog (with more information on the Cover Her Face process collected here).

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC: What's your background in design and illustration? How did you get into the field?

JONATHAN BURTON: I studied general Art & Design at three colleges in the North of England which were in Scunthorpe, Blackpool and Bradford. I then specialized in Illustration to do an MA at Kingston University, London, which was the course that really motivated me and made me fall in love with image making. Too many years at college though, too poor for too long.

CCC: Folio work with a wide variety of artists, not just a few regulars. How did you being the designer/illustrator for this book come about?

JONATHAN BURTON: I'd sent the Art Director several mailshots over the years so when they called I assumed they had found me that way, but that wasn't the case. The Art Director had found me by chance at www.aoiportfolios.com. They called and asked if I'd like to illustrate Birdsong which I got very excited about so spent that Christmas immersing myself in the book. The first image I sent was refused by the novels author Sebastian Faulks who had the final say, the second one was refused too. I was really disappointed but in retrospect I think my drawings were too descriptive for the tone of the book and I should have taken a step back. A softer feel may have been more appropriate.

The Art Director and Editor at Folio were really enthusiastic about the work I'd done though and straight after offered me Cover Her Face. PD James accepted the first image (hooray) and it went from there.

CCC: Often cover designers don't even have the full manuscript to work from, but you had lots of detailed internal artwork to do, and the posts on your blog show lots of close reading to get the scenes and characters right. What was that experience like?

JONATHAN BURTON: It was so interesting to jump into the world of that story and rummage around. I imagined I was making a film where I was casting director, costume designer, prop collector, continuity checker.... the lot. Everything was noted down - characters age, clothes, hairstyle, what was where in each room and even as to where the light was coming from for each scene in particular for the overhead 'crime scene' which became the most complex illustration. PD James is so descriptive of her environments that I couldn't stop myself putting every item and person in their correct place. All of that research into detail became incidental only serving to make the settings more authentic as the most important thing to get across was the sense of drama.

CCC: Do you have any interest in sequential art/comics? I can imagine how cool Burton's Lives of the Composers would be!

JONATHAN BURTON: I love Chris Ware, Seth, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, the Blab comic... all the Fantagraphics books basically.

I've always felt intimidated by the huge amount of work that must be involved in creating a comic book but recently, after working with Folio and now trying to wrestle a children's book to the ground, I've discovered that it's the background work where the fun is at, so I think that if I could devote myself to it I'd really love it. Lives of the Composers, I could get into that.

[NB: Jonathan has created illustrations of many of the great composers for Classic FM in the UK. Here are  Dvorak...

..Satie...

 

..Brahms...

 

..and Beethoven.]

 

I moved to France a few years ago and the Bande Dessinée is taken very seriously here, and seeing the festival of BD at Angoulême has shown me that the market for comics is enormous. Likewise the amount of competition.

CCC: Dream job: Folio ask you to choose any book at all to work your magic on--what would you choose?

JONATHAN BURTON: Lady Chatterley's Lover is such a great book and the 1920s setting would be interesting to explore. I've also recently read the epic The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, set in a sleazy Victorian London. That would be a huge project.... I'm drooling now. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, too, while I'm at it.

CCC: Is there any neglected book you'd love to draw to people's attention as something they should seek out?

JONATHAN BURTON: I'm not sure this is neglected as every Art student in the UK would have had it rammed down their throat but I've recently got back into Ways of Seeing by John Berger. It accompanied a 1970s BBC TV series which is now available on Youtube. The 70's style of programme has really dated but the ideas are still very interesting. With you being a critic of book design though I should point out that it's also a very ugly book! All the text in large bold type with black and white photos haphazardly placed throughout. Strange that it's about how we see images yet it's so carelessly designed. Never mind, the ideas are good.

CCC: Thank you, Mr Burton!

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Further reading from the archives: for another take on Cover Her Face, see here, and for more on Ways of Seeing, see here. 

Folios to Come

Coming up is an interview with Jonathan Burton, who has beautifully illustrated the new Folio Society edition of P. D. James' Cover Her Face. To get you in the mood, here are some other upcoming Folio highlights.

Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, cover and illustrations by Matthew Woodson:

 

  

 

William Golding's Lord of the Flies, cover and illustrations by Sam Weber (last seen in this post):

 

  

 

John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, cover and illustrations by  Tim Laing:

 

  

  

And here's George Psychoundakis's The Cretan Runner, last seen here, cover by Neil Gower:

 

See? These are all good covers! This blog hasn't degenerated into a freakshow of horrors!

The Woodcuts of Simon Brett

There is a lot of received wisdom in the publishing industry about what does and doesn't sell:

* Short stories don't sell.

* Translations don't sell.

* Poetry doesn't sell.

* Slim books don't sell.

Thus, a slender book of translated Russian short stories in verse is an obvious money-spinner. Fortunately, publisher David R. Godine ignored the financial side of things, and put out Antony Wood's translations of a number of Alexander Pushkin's narrative poems, The Gypsies.



This gorgeous little book features a number of woodcuts by engraver Simon Brett. Here's a sample (click for a bigger version) from 'The Golden Cockerel'.



Brett is great. He's done a lot of work in the past for the Folio Society; here's a selection.

For George Eliot's Middlemarch:



Marcus Aurelius's Meditations:



Aristotle's Ethics:



Cicero's On the Good Life:



Lucretius's On the Nature of Things:



John Keats (soon to be cinematically fucked up by Jane Campion!):




Henry Fielding's Amelia:



and Legends of the Ring:

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Further reading: a different set of Pushkin illustrations, including Ivan Bilibin on 'The Golden Cockerel'; plus the woodcut geniuses Lynd Ward and Fritz Eichenberg.