The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Illustrator drawing on talent and inspiration
Falkirk’s Callendar House is famed for its stunning French chateau-style architecture, landscaped gardens and as a film location for Outlander.
This spring and summer, the historic mansion also plays host to an exhibition dedicated to a respected illustrator with connections to Dundee and Fife.
A Blink of Ink ... the Creative World of Jill Calder provides a colourful insight into the career of an artist, born in the City of Discovery and raised in Broughty Ferry.
In recent years she has published several works for children, collaborating with well-known authors such as Michael Rosen.
Now based in Largo, Jill has worked as an illustrator since the early 1990s.
Skilled in drawing, calligraphy and digital techniques, she often combines these to create arresting images.
Also clear from the show is her taste for bright colours, something Jill readily agrees with.
“I’m totally attracted to colour and naturally, left to my own advances, I do use quite bright tones,” she says. “Working as an illustrator, especially on more corporate work, there’s often a palette you have to use, which is restrictive, but that’s interesting because you have to adapt.”
From early commissions for The Scotsman (her debut piece from its education supplement is proudly on display), Jill has worked with organisations ranging from the BBC via the National Museum of Scotland to English Heritage.
Jill’s debut picture book, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, was written by James Robertson and published in 2014. Three years later came The Picture Atlas: An Incredible Journey (written by Simon Holland), followed in 2018 by Michael Rosen’s What is Poetry?, nominated for a prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal.
These have been among Jill’s most rewarding work and given her a taste for writing her own book.
“It’s really important for me, and I love doing them,” she says. “It’s not just a book you do, you then do school visits, go to libraries, and I loved that, because as an illustrator you’re pretty solitary. And kids keep you on your toes.”
A Blink of Ink... has been devised by Falkirk Council as part of its contribution to the government-led initiative Scotland’s Year of Storytelling 2022.
Jill came to its attention as the single Scottish participant in a British Council global exhibition Drawing Words featuring 10 children’s illustrators that saw the designer visit Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2019 and 2020.
With the free exhibition taking over both the main Park Gallery and second floor spaces, Callendar House is showing a wide range of Jill’s artwork from across her 30-year career, even as far back as her school days.
With a civil engineer father and a mother who worked as a PE teacher, Jill admits her upbringing was far from arty. However, both parents encouraged an early talent for drawing, so after Dundee High she could apply for art school, Jill remembers.
“Right from the go I always loved drawing and reading, that’s what gave me pleasure,” she says.
“I was the youngest of three and there was a wee gap between me and my elder sister, so they were a bit softer with me. No one was saying I had to get a sensible career.”
On her foundation course, Jill was encouraged to specialise in illustration, advised by a perceptive tutor she had shown talent in drawing and “told stories” through her work.
With sketch books displayed alongside end products ranging from whisky bottles to corporate brochures plus gallery work, Jill hopes her first retrospective will give budding artists an insight into her practice.
“I haven’t done anything on this scale before, I’m not really an exhibiting artist,” she says. “But it’s wonderful to have this opportunity to show what work illustrators do. You open a book or magazine and see the final image, but there’s a lot of work that goes into that finished piece.
“It starts in a sketch book or a note book and lots of ideas get rejected. Some of them are really good, but they don’t work for that article or whatever.
“It’s showing the drawings, the mistakes you make along the way. That’s really important to see, in particular for young people.
“Hopefully they’ll see it’s not all about the perfect end image, but the process that goes into that.”
A Blink of Ink runs until September 11. See Falkirkleisureandculture. org/venues/callendarhouse