British Illustrators 36: Charles Keeping

Charles Keeping was another Greenaway Medal winner. Charles Keeping first came to prominence illustrating some of the historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff. He actually won two Greenaway Medals, one for his own story, “Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary”, and one for his illustrated edition of Alfred Noyes’ poem “The Highwayman”.

Keeping served in the Royal Navy during World War II, having joined at the age of 18. After the war he studied Art part time and then full time, and from the 50s until his death in 1988 he worked for many outlets, including Punch. In 1956 he was commissioned to illustrate Rosemary Sutcliff’s “The Silver Branch”. His success saw him commissioned to illustrate others of Sutcliff’s novels and also those of Henry Treece and others.

I’ve chosen to copy an illustration Keeping made for an edition of “The Jungle Book”. The most complicated parts were the trees and foliage in the background. Two different graphite pencils – a 6B for lighter shading and a 2B for darker shading – really gave this texture – it looked nothing like as good with just the ink marks.

British Illustrators 35: Sir Frank Brangwyn

Largely self-taught Sir Frank Brangwyn produced over 12000 works during his lifetime in his career as painter, print maker, designer and illustrator between the end of the 19^th century, and his death in 1956. By the middle of the 20^th century he was one of the most popular and successful British artists of the time.

In the nearest city to where I live in Wales, Swansea, there is a large gallery and performance space named after him, the Brangwyn Hall. It is so called because it contains a number of murals he painted which were commissioned for, then rejected by the House of Lords in Westminster. Their loss was Swansea’s gain.

In 2006, when I was staying in Leeds, Yorkshire, to take part in a popular television quiz show, there was an exhibition of Brangwyn’s work in Leeds’ magnificent Town Hall. I knew next to nothing about him, but was bowled over by what I saw, not just his illustration work, and his graphic work, but also by some of his incredibly vibrant and joyous paintings. This is a copy of his painting “A Street Scene in Tangiers”. The original is an oil painting, while I used acrylics, and a canvas only about half the size of the original. It must have taken well over 10 hours for me to paint this, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.