Sara Fanelli - Children's Book Illustrator

Sara Fanelli, originally from Florence, is a children’s book illustrator who moved to London in 1990 to study. Her experimental, ephemeral style has given her the spotlight in more recent years as one of the UK’s most sought after Illustrators. Using Collage, photo-montage, hand-lettering and freeing materials such as pen or brush and ink, she creates dream-like, surreal images. Her work covers a wide variety of literature and printed media, something that the artist has been very passionate about since her early childhood.

Study Number One

My first study inspired by Fanelli saw me delve into the vast world of collage, something that is very prolific in her illustrative work. On a slightly creased piece of graph paper, I inked a distorted, blurry body, later adding a large number of eyes, an ear and some legs using some black and white photocopies and a scrap of brown paper.  In the foreground of the image I added a torn piece of map paper for my two cowering victims to hide behind and a hand-written piece of text. I am happy with this image as it directly references a number of Fanelli’s illustrative habits; her creation of surreal fictional creatures and her use of collage, particularly with the use of the graph paper.

Study Number Two

My second study saw me once again breaking out the ink. This time I lay down a base colour of a mustardy yellow, a colour that Fanelli seems particularly infatuated with. Onto this I collaged the oven surface and the pot of food, later inking in the ends of the surface and the flames from beneath the pot. I then drew the rather dead-eyed chef using a thin paintbrush. I read in an interview with the artist that her drawings are made with a brush. She said "It's bolder than a pen and I like to allow the mark itself to suggest the direction the drawing should take” [1] so this is why I used this tool specifically. After this drawing was made I then added the collaged phrase, as a humorous touch. I noticed that she uses a lot of strange questions and sayings in her work so I decided to add one to this to tie the image together. 

Study Number Three

This study got a little bit weird. Reverting back to my original study, I decided to create another bizarre creature, this time opting for collage as my only technique. I took to a small fashion magazine looking for eyes and hair. I knew roughly that I wanted it to be a hairy monster but how I got to him/her would be something that I discovered along the way. In an interview with ‘Books for Keeps’ Fanelli mentioned that she ‘very much liked the element of chance and freedom that the process of creating a collage brings to a picture’ [2]. Whilst I also found in a similar article from Varoom magazine that she does ‘plan a general composition, so that she has a guide for her ‘happy mistakes’ ’ [3]. Similarly I had no idea what the end product would look like with this collage but the elements that I found resulted in what I would definitely refer to as a ‘happy mistake’, even if it was a rather odd one.

Study Number Four

For my final study I decided to tackle some subject matter that wouldn’t be too far from something Fanelli herself would illustrate. Using some of my spare collage eyes and a couple of chunky marker pens I interpreted the famous tale of the pied piper. In hindsight I think that the use of the eyes as rats, gives the piece a really surreal, almost sinister effect. Although given the work that Fanelli has produced before, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In one interview she said ‘There is an element of playfulness in the surreal side of things that is fundamental for me’ [], and I really think that shows in her work and the materials she uses to produce it. As well as reverting back to the trusted technique of collage, I also tried to emulate another area of Fanelli’s work that is quite specific to her. Many of her images lack spatial depth, especially her characters. One method that she uses to do this is by letting them be drawn straight onto the background rather than inking them in, so that the whole figure is filled in with one colour, the same colour as the background behind it. That is why I let the branches of the tree bleed through from underneath the piper’s face. 

References

[1] Carey, 2004.
[2] Robins, 2012.
[3] Heller, 2007

Bibliography

Carey, J. 2004. The Guardian. Dynamic Doodles. [Online] [Accessed from 2015] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview8

Heller, S. 2007. Graphic Gestures: An interview with Sara Fanelli. Wolves, Logic and Happy Mistakes. [Online] [Accessed from 2015] Available from: http://www.hellerbooks.com/pdfs/varoom_03.pdf

Robins, G. 2012. Books for Keeps. [Online] [Accessed from 2015] Available from: http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/195/childrens-books/articles/the-dream-like-images-of-sara-fanelli