Drawings to save animals
Here’s a great initiative that underscores the value of reportage as a communication and marketing tool.
Wildlife artist Delphine Zigoni, 11 other sketchers from USk Paris and journalist Marianne Lagrange recently teamed up to document the life of laboratory animals.
They partenered with White Rabbit, a French association that finds homes for the animals when the laboratories no longer need them and they are likely to be put to sleep. Since the association started 10 years ago, more than 2,600 creatures have been adopted, including rabbits, rats, guinea pigs and even fish.
Each artist sketched an animal with their adopted family, said Zigoni, who got to portray Alpha, the first lab rabbit saved by the association.
The result of this volunteer project is “Quand les Animaux Sortent du Labo” (“When the Animals Leave the Laboratory”), a 100-page promotional book that was just released last week in France.
Zigoni says the book should help White Rabbit communicate their mission to the scientific community at large and ultimately give more animals the chance at a longer life.
Genine Carvalheira and Speedball
Prolific travel sketcher Genine Carvalheira is one of the latest artists to be tapped by the legendary Speedball brand of art products for an Instagram takeover collaboration.
For five days earlier this month, Carvalheira created super informative posts about her work as an urban sketcher (tools, tips, a sketchbook reveal, you name it) that were cross-posted from speedball_dip.
What were the terms of this collaboration? She told me via chat that Speedball didn’t ask to review her content beforehand. She only had to refrain from mentioning competing brands or products.
The brand offered to ship her some of their products, and she got “actually more than I even requested.”
Carvalheira, an American artist and designer currently based in Bogotá, has been eagerly recording her life and travels across more than 30 countries since 2007, filling more than 85 sketchbooks to date. She currently serves as president of Urban Sketchers, a volunteer role.
I’m looking forward to seeing some of her sketchbooks in real life when she comes to the Seattle area in July for Sketcher Fest Edmonds.
Have you partnered with any brands to promote your art? I’d love to hear your experience.
Award-winning illustrated reporting
The Pulitzer Prizes are the most coveted awards in the journalism industry. In 2021 the Editorial Cartooning category was recast as the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary. This has shined the spotlight on talented artists who create nonfiction comics and graphic novels, a genre that has exploded.
Médar de la Cruz, a Brooklyn-based illustrator, was just announced as the category winner this year for “The Diary of a Rikers Island Library Worker,” an article commissioned and published by The New Yorker magazine.
“De la Cruz’s evocative drawings depict his deliveries of books to inmates, offering the public a rare glimpse inside Rikers, where cameras and phones are banned and inmates are subject to conditions that have been harshly criticized by legal and human-rights organizations.”
De la Cruz’s powerful black-and-white illustrations may not be on-the-spot drawings per se, but they show scenes he witnessed first hand. He told me via chat that the final art was based on quick sketches and other reference. Here’s how he described his process:
“So photography is not allowed at Rikers but a lot of the drawings were pieced together from very quick sketches that were done on location. Over the course of several months I would work on the drawings from memory and notes that I would take from the locations that I returned to over and over again. I also tried looking for images I would find online of security camera footage and documentaries to make some details look more accurate. There wasn’t very much to pull from online so most of it just had to be done from memory, and some of them I would use photographs I took of myself to get the position of hands and body parts to look more accurate also.”
The article as a whole struck me as the kind of storytelling reportage artists and urban sketchers are able to create: first-person illustrated accounts of interesting places, people and culture. That’s what On the Spot articles are all about.
Bookshelf
English reportage artist George Butler is in the midst of promoting his upcoming book, “Ukraine Remember Also Me,” a collection of portraits and testimonies from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is already available for pre-order in the UK from Waterstones.
Emerging visual storytellers
I was excited to see the recent call for “Emerging Storytellers” launched by the Urban Sketchers organization.
“#USkEmergingStorytellers is a new initiative by Urban Sketchers looking to showcase reportage artists and visual storytellers aged 18-25. We’re on a mission to empower and celebrate the next generation of reportage artists, and we need your talent to make it happen.”
Mohan Banerji, who serves on the Urban Sketchers board as volunteer sponsorship director, says the program aims to inspire youth to tell stories of their communities through on-location drawing.
Roman Szmal, the Poland-based maker of Aquarius watercolors, is sponsoring the program with a cash donation and products for the selected artists.
Calendar
May 30-June 2. Erlangen 21th International Comic Salon in Germany including “The World in a Sketchbook" urban sketcher village.
June 27-29. Neuchatel. 6th Swiss Urban Sketchers Symposium.
October 9-12. Buenos Aires. 12th Urban Sketchers Symposium
July 5-7. Teruel, Spain. XIV De Vuelta Con el Cuaderno. Dibujo Color Tierra
July 12-14. Chicago. USK Chicago Seminar
July 19-21. Edmonds, Wash. Sketcher Fest Edmonds
July 27-28. Cadiz-Puerto de Santa María, Spain. Fin de Semana USk Ibérico
Sept. 21, 22. Valencia, Spain. IV Trobada USk del Mediterrani
Oct. 9-12. Buenos Aires. 12th Urban Sketchers Symposium
Oct. 25 to Nov. 11. Venice. Matite in Viaggio. Travel sketchbooks exhibit (May 31 is the deadline to submit applications)
Hi Gabi
Thank you for your newsletter. Gracias
I love Genine's work. And I would also like to meet her, maybe one day in Bogota (my mother lives there).
About your question Gaby: "Have you partnered with any brands to promote your art?"
No never. I refuse to do it. When I talk about the material I use it is for free. I believe that we can mention any brands and no one should come to ask us about not mentioning competing brands or products. 😉
Médar de la Cruz's Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary (formerly the Editorial Cartooning category) is a bold and wonderful pivot for illustrated journalism.