Barbara Firth (Children's Book Illustrator)

Barbara Firth (multi award winning illustrator for the 'little bear' series), was a children's book illustrator, who developed sketches for her clients. She claims on her page, that she has been drawing plants and animals from a very young age. After her education at school, she enrolled herself on an fashion and pattern course, at the London college of fashion. She has worked with Vogue magazine, and here she produced illustrations for such things as step by steps.

Years later, she became a freelance illustrator, and after she began working for the book company, Walker Books, she was able to illustrate in the field she was most interested in, this was natural history. This brought her a lot of joy, and she enjoyed drawing such illustrations as bears.

Her first book, in her series of Big and Little bear books, was called 'Can't You Sleep Little Bear?' and she went to the zoo often for research, sketching the anatomy and movement of live bears, in order to create her images. This type of research is great, for an illustrator to do.

Her form is very much so on the cartoon side, but with some realistic elements in there, and that's why I am including her. Her work is not like some of the cartoon/realistic artists that I researched, however it has its resemblances. It seems to (in my opinion) be exactly between the two genres. There are simple colours and textures, but with a realistic anatomy.

http://www.imagesofdelight.com/view_illustration.php?id=953 < image reference at this link.

The image above is made using watercolours and pencils, and is from the book, 'Well done, Little bear'. and was published in 1999 by Walker Books Ltd.

http://www.imagesofdelight.com/view_illustration.php?id=976 < image reference at this link.

The main reasons as to why I decided to produce research on her, is because she 1) Draws animals,

2) Has produced work for children's books, 3) Uses a cartoon like style, with a hint of realism, 4) Also adopts a 50's like style in her images, which I really like.

I can also tie this research into my professional studies blogposts, as I have been researching the themes of  children's book illustrators.

Sadly, Barbara died early on in 2013.

I will use her as part of my inspiration, for making my book, and it's illustrations. I like the effect of using watercolour paint, so I think I will try doing so. Also, I love her simple, yet interesting minimalist cartoon/realistic style of drawing. I will take some influence from Barbara Firth, for my final illustrations.

Thomas.