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The other day on leaving my flat I was accosted by a couple of very young neighbours of mine. Each was clutching a book of junior learning, one about the human body and the other the history of the British Isles. "Tell me about this page!" they chorused together, each pointing to a page in their respective tome. I was being asked to simultaneously tackle the human digestive system and Stonehenge. My knowledge of either being somewhat limited I quickly scanned the illustrations on the pages and improvised as best I could.
What they made of my witterings I don't know, but it certainly proved a point about the value of a certain kind of art. Behind the razzmatazz of the frontline illustrators whose artistic expressions appear in advertising campaigns and glossy magazines there lurks another breed of illustrators who deal with fact rather than fantasy.
These are the likes of veteran illustrator John Woodcock: "My work is all for non-fiction. I'm a technician not an innovator, and I like to be given a very tight brief," he states. Producing material mostly for book publishers, Woodcock's images are largely informative, involving maps, diagrams and other educational or factually-based visuals for the likes of Dorling Kindersley, Usborne Publishing and Random House. His abilities in this sphere have just been recognised with an award from the Times Educational Supplement for his work on Usborne's children's book 'A Visitor's Guide to Ancient Rome'.
With a BA Honours degree in Graphic Design from Norwich School of Art, Woodcock has been practising his craft for near on twenty years but has only taken up the Mac as a tool of his trade in the last one or two. Having always worked in pen and ink and acrylics, he now uses Illustrator. "I get an image, a pen and ink sketch of my own or a photo and scan it in to Photoshop, save it as a PICT file, then import it into Illustrator and trace over it and build on it from there," he explains.
Explaining his preference for Illustrator over Photoshop, Woodcock says, "Illustrator is very accurate and being vector-based gives a nice clean sharp edge. Photoshop is pixel-based and frankly I don't find it necessary, I can do everything I want in Illustrator.
"I've been using Illustrator 8 up till now, but I've just got Illustrator 9 which has this fantastic new feature that I've been waiting for ages - they've added a transparency effect which is really brilliant and makes life a lot easier, especially for cutaway diagrams."
Woodcock got into book illustration as a chance development while working in book production for book packager QED. "I realised there was a gap in the market for this type of illustration and I've been working in it ever since. Some of my work is for packaging companies who come up with an idea for a book or a series and then put it to a publisher. It's a strange business - you can present a dummy of a possible publication at the Frankfurt book fair and two or three years later it suddenly goes into production," he says.
Woodcock is presently busy working on a book about DIY house renovation, a Dinosaurs edition in an ongoing wildlife series for Usborne, two travel guides for Dorling Kindersley - and attempting to find the time to experiment with more personal work.
"I really love the style of children's illustration from the 50s and 60s and am influenced by that in the newer work I am currently doing," he says. His work has a certain innocent charm and simplicity which is comforting and delightful; and I must admit to having felt a certain nostalgia on seeing these pieces. Oops - did I just give something away?
John Woodcock can be contacted on 01728 747909 or by email to john.woodcock2@virgin.net
Adobe contributor Suzanne Cline is a writer and multimedia artist in the UK. Her philosophy is that technology is for today but creativity is for life.
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