OUGD503 - Studio Brief 02 - Children's Book Research: 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.

Carlin is most famous for her series of illustrations for a children's book by Ted Hughes, called 'The Iron Man'. Her illustrations for this story is representational of this belief that you should step out of your comfort zone in terms of inspiration. These illustrations include subtle differences and ideas which you have to pay close attention to to notice. One of these is that in the book Carlin gave the Iron Man a shadow but not the townspeople. This was done in order to show their ignorance towards the man. It's not until the end of the story that every character eventually has a shadow, when they are able to finally 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, therefore you should not patronise them as the reader by choosing to avoid subjects which may be seen as difficult or 'inappropriate' for young children.

For the children to be engaged with the story, Carlin also says that the characters must be believable as real people. This can be done through giving them small narrative in their creation, some form of personality, which gives the characters this essence of 'realness'. Such ideas can also be seen within her own illustrated books. 'A World of Your Own' is aimed to encourage children to draw and create their own narratives, overall helping to spark their imagination as young creatives, learners and thinkers.