Lauren Child Research -101 Marks

I feel Child’s unique mark making style inspires my 101 mark making project as she has a loose style within her outlines which combines with other marks to create an overall image and environment that engages children of her target market. I will therefore explore a similar use of mark making to see how this works for myself and how I can use her work  

 Lauren Child is a british graphic novelist and illustrator born in 1967 in Marlborough, Wiltshire. She is best known for her children’s illustrations such as Charlie and Lola, Clarice Bean and Ruby Redfort. Her style is unique and features a range of interesting and expressive marks from strong black outlines to digital collage textures. 

Lauren Child inspires me within her unique visual language as she combines magazine cuttings and photography with traditional media’s such as watercolour to create a fun illustration style that captures the attention of her targeted audience whilst giving life to her ideas. Child was recognised for her artistic style and was named Children’s Laureate for 2017-2019 and was awarded an MBE for her services to literature. 

I feel Child is a strong influence for my 101 marks project as she uses her line work to create an interesting texture and style showing it can be used in multiple different ways to capture the audience. 

For example in the image above we see Child’s iconic character Lola from children’s book series ‘Charlie and Lola’. This chosen illustration is a good example of Child’s mix media work and how she uses her different marks to create an environment. For example Lola is shown with a watercolour like texture for body and some clothing, however the elephants surrounding her are filled with photographic collage. This adds texture and depth to the illustration whilst also adding fun colours which capture the readers imagination.