The 20th edition of Varoom!, the Association of Illustrators' award-winning, quarterly magazine which celebrates the cultural, political and social ideas in contemporary illustration from around the world, is now available.
The muse works in mysterious ways. You never know where and when inspiration will hit you. The latest issue of Varoom explores the different roles. This issue's cover artist is Aude Van Ryn who depicts her personal muse and talks about how that has nourished her ideas on her travels.
Bill Prosser celebrates the remarkable career of Grace Plunkett, the Irish illustrator whose sensuous black and white work is closely associated with theatre. Her life as an activist saw her imprisoned and her husband murdered.
The fabulous world of birds takes flight in a feature that looks at the Ghosts of Gone Birds project which covers extinct species, as well as focussing on the great French-American 19th Century chronicler of our feathered friends, John James Audubon, whose Birds of America volume remains a classic.
Desdemona McCannon gives an overview of Polish illustration, including an interview with London-born Andzej Klimowski who studied poster design at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He has designed artwork for most films by Jim Jarmusch, including Down By Law.
Roderick Mills and Jasper Goodall examine the special space called The Crit where students first learn to reflect on their image-making, their creative thinking and ultimately their professional, artistic and personal ambition whilst Jeremy Leslie takes us into the creative relationship between poetry and illustration.
With a growing sea of cutesy character designs appearing on greetings cards and in all areas of arts, Varoom looks at the current role of sentimentality with a summary of the discussions that arose during the recent The Sentimental Gene symposium , which featured Laura Carlin, illustrator of Ted Hughes' The Iron Man, and papercut artist Rob Ryan.
In the Market Values column, John P Lowe reveals the inspiration behind Josh Kramer's cartoon, one of the contributions to the Significant Objects project, which has now become a critically acclaimed sensation from Fantagraphics.
The magazine includes its regular news round-up sections covering street art, personal work, marketing and more, as well as opinion pieces, including regular editorial and artwork from Paul Davis.