DAVID DEAN: Featured Artist July 2011

I have been working as an illustrator since graduating from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1999 with a BA Hons and an MA. I have worked in most areas for a wide range of clients, but the majority of my work is, and has always been, for children's books. I'm still managing to resist the allure of digital and paint all my illustrations in acrylic, though I now use Photoshop a lot as part of my roughs process, where speed and the ability to easily change things are vital.



Vibrant colour and a sense of the exotic have always been constants in my work, though in other respects my work is constantly developing - when I started out I was very keen on flat perspective but over the past few years, as a result of being commissioned to illustrate quite a few children's adventure novels, I have been trying to add a bit of drama to my compositions.



My great love is the book cover and I have been lucky enough to illustrate over 60 covers to date, including those for Lauren St John's 'White Giraffe' quartet, published by Orion, which were recognised last year when they were shortlisted in the Series/Brand Identity category of the British Book Design & Production Awards. Lauren is now in the midst of working on a new quartet of novels, 'The Laura Marlin Mysteries' and I am providing covers and interior illustrations for those too. The chance to work with an author and a set of characters over several years, and to create a visual identity for the books, has been a real thrill.



I spent the majority of last year working on a children's atlas for Barefoot Books, which is undoubtedly my biggest job to date in terms of the time spent on it. With large maps of each region of the world, plus a pull-out poster, mini fact booklets and over 450 icons of animals, peoples, plants and buildings, it involved a massive amount of research but was a very rewarding project. I'm currently working on a cover for Random House, and have recently finished illustrating the third novel in a wonderful trilogy of children's books by the author David Alric which was great fun to work on as it involved painting lots of animals and dinosaurs(!) and children having adventures in the Congo basin, battling proper villains driving old army trucks. As someone said to me, this is exactly the sort of thing they imagined illustrators doing when they were a child. I couldn't agree more, and I love it.



You can see more of my work on my agent's website here: organisart.co.uk or by visiting my AOI Portfolio.