We need relationships to be predictable, and we need them to surprise us. We need security and thrills. This issue of Varoom on Relationships is no different. Great illustration? Check. Stimulating writing? Check. Barbara Cartland? Check. In an issue exploring everything from the relationship of art directors and illustrators, rock musicians and drawing, poetry and pictures, the craft and insight of illustrators and writers in Varoom 14 will tickle your fancy.
For The Significant Other, Varoom asked five illustrators to respond to the idea of the Significant Other, visualising a piece of work that has shaped their illustration.
In a genre not known for subtlety, Romance fiction has inspired extraordinary illustration, and A Fine Romance looks at the work of Francis Marshall, Barbara Cartland's favourite illustrator and Hannah Rollins' witty contemporary take on romance imagery.
In The Scribbler, The Photographer & The Celtic Punk W.John Hewitt hit the road with The Pogues in the late eighties with a sketchbook in hand and a photographer also alongside. How did the bans react to these two different forms of reportage?
Great illustration comes out of the relationship between art director and illustrator, but what are the pitfalls, and what makes it work? The Aesthetics of a Relationship explores these.
In The Bibliophile we discover how Audrey Niffenegger, the best selling author of The Time Traveler's Wife ventured into artists books. Niffenegger reveals her first experience of rudimentary bookmaking in her college days of the 80s, how the influence of the modern-day bookmaking scene in Chicago has informed her practice and how the physicality of artists books separates them from published books.
This issue's section of Up Front features illustration work connected to Mark Ronson's new CD, Allen Ginsburg's Howl and Dean Owens' reaction to the urge to cry. Renowned illustrators, Marian Bantjes and Paul Davis, Varoom's two regular contributors, give their unique take on the relationships theme, and in I Wish I'd Done This Babette Cole, creator of Mummy Laid An Egg, proposes the need for more 'madness' in children's books.