About me
Eddy Burrows has currently finished his final year at Birmingham City University receiving a First Class Honors in BA Visual Communication in Illustration as well as being nominated for the AOI Competition. He is a versatile artist and has practiced in print making, moving image and painting with various medias.
His more recent illustration work has focused on narrative which targets a younger demographic. Eddy has experimented with various styles throughout his three years in education and his final year proved vital when developing his most favoured style which helped influence him to create his first children's picture book which he has written and illustrated. His favoured illustration style is hand drawn then edited digitally to appeal to a younger audience. Eddy mostly uses bright block colours when creating his art work, this compliments his recognisable illustration style and serves a crucial role when capturing the young audiences attention.
Projects
- Which Shoes?Picture Books are an important aspect in a child's life. Through this shared media they can discover, discuss and understand the world around them. Original research started with informal interviews with young children and their parents to discover which books they share and read together also what subjects are relevant to the young reader. Shoes and their importance to a pre-schooler came apparent in these discussions. When creating my children's picture book I wanted it to be visually creative and playful to connect to a young target audience. The narrative from my picture book consists of a repetitive rhyming text and introduces each new location that the characters visit. The children's narrative follows the characters of Sam and Pip through their week of adventure accompanied by Boots their mischievous kitten. The character Boots appears on every double page spread however the character is sometimes hard to find which makes it fun for the young reader. When looking at the statutory requirements for my target audience, which is reception, years 1 and 2, I saw that the children had to spell the days of the week and common exception words. My feedback from the primary schools was very positive! The children interacted well with the characters especially Boots the mischievous kitten. Some of the children didn't think that boys could do ballet so some elements of my work have helped challenge children's stereotypical views. My opening pages created class discussions which I hoped would happen, some classes actually used my concept to develop into lessons which I was very honoured to be apart of. I was pleased to be informed that some children were still using the ideas from my book to independently write their own stories. I was pleased with the positive feedback. One head teacher strongly agreed with me using shoes as a narrative because shoes are a very important component in acquisition of life skills. A teacher from Cheshire East thought it was a lovely book to share after class or before lunch and was very pleased that my picture book consists of the conjunction ‘or’ which is extremely hard to find on the market. Another teacher was pleased I included some elements of the statutory requirements such as days of the week which is perfect for my demographic.
- Hen DesignsI was commissioned to create a series of 1920’s Hen Party invitations where they made lingerie as one of the activities. The hens are portrayed in various humorous poses and outfits. When creating the hen designs I produced a range of pen and ink drawings which were then edited on photoshop.
- Penguin Brief : The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4The project was to create an original design for a book cover from the titles provided from Penguin. I selected the title ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4’. This particular title was ideal for my illustration style as the subject matter fits very well. I was producing the cover not just for young teenagers but for an older demographic. The target audience is more diverse because the book was published in 1982 so the older audience would want to re-visit the book to take them back to their youth. Also new older readers would love the read because of the sharp wit and humour in the book. By reading, Adrian Mole, I began noting my favourite diary entries and annotating them to create a visual background of who Adrian Mole was. Many items appeared in the diary entries which were crucial in telling the stories. I knew I had to include the items in the book cover but I did not know how to include them. I had some inspiration from some wrapping paper I saw in my room, the way the images were laid out and interlocked to form a positive visual. I used this method to incorporate the Adrian Mole items I selected to create as a background for the cover. I developed a number of illustrations from the diary entries and began experimenting with colour to see what worked well. I opened a new tab and selected the best illustrations to include for the book cover design before producing. I did not study a practitioner as such because I wanted to create a complete original piece however I studied many book covers to get a good insight on typography and layouts. The editing process I use to differentiate between my preferred ideas was simple but effective. I created multiple copies in different layouts and colours to see which solution was the best.
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Skills
- Narrative Illustration
- Children Illustration
- Humour
- Character Designs
- Author
- Digital Illlustration
- Adobe Illustrator
- Book Cover
- Book Design
- Print Digital Design
Education
BA(Hons) First Class Illustration and Visual Communication
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Awards
Nominated for the AOI AwardAssociation of Illustrators (AOI)
One of 4 nominees for the AOI award which was announced in June 2017