Journal of Illustration - Current Issue

In modern higher education, students are more vocal about their preferences and lifestyles. This attribute has allowed educators to introduce subjects that were previously considered taboo in the classroom. Students’ expressive and experimental nature also calls for new ways to blend pedagogy with their interests. This article focuses on my course, ‘Sequential art for mental health’, offered to post-graduate design students at a university. One student, Monika, who suffers from severe alopecia, shared her journey of transitioning from being a patient to an author of her condition by creating a graphic narrative in the form of a zine. This article highlights the essential factors that educators should consider to facilitate successful transitions in the classroom. As mental health disorders continue to affect more students, medical interventions are being implemented to address the issue. However, those suffering from these disorders still face many challenges in their daily lives. Mental health remains a top priority in universities, particularly for students. While an artist’s depiction of mental illness may differ from that of a patient’s personal experience, this article stresses the importance of using illustrations and sequential art to promote mental health. Co-creative learning and collaborative participation methods are recommended in this article as effective strategies for achieving this goal. Additionally, fundamental skills such as drawing are highlighted as valuable tools for self-improvement and awareness. Ultimately, this article explores the intersection of pedagogy, illustration and expression, paving the way for new directions in education and learning.

The perspectives of people labelled with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) remain significantly underrepresented in academic research. This article introduces a developing research methodology that explores how illustration-based methods might assist researchers in attuning to, and amplifying, non-linguistic contributions to knowledge made by people who do not use conventional language to communicate. As a medium that champions alternative forms of communication and aims to make complex subjects accessible to a wide range of audiences, illustration offers additional opportunities to open up the research arena to people with PIMD. This potential is discussed here within the framework of the author’s ongoing Ph.D. research. The methodology outlined in this article is developed within the Sensory Studio, a mobile workspace purpose-built for artistic exchange and co-creation between artists with PIMD and Frozen Light Theatre, a Norwich-based organization creating multi-sensory shows specifically for PIMD audiences. Reflecting on the ethical considerations that shaped the design of this methodology, the author shares some of the unanticipated findings that research through illustration has so far brought to light.

This article explores the experiential qualities of drawing from the world of Google Maps. It will consider the possibilities of drawing from digital geographies and the potential of virtual travel to offer newfound perspectives. Notions of regret, danger and magic are investigated to support the concept of the artist-cyberflâneur as the practice of observing, revealing and reclaiming parts of the internet space through artistic endeavours. Regret: How does drawing from the Google Map reality incite comparisons and feelings of longing? Danger: What are the rules of copyright and the restrictions of edited, curated online spaces? Magic: What can the artist’s work from Google Maps reveal about our world as distanced observers, and what transportive qualities can Google Maps inspire? This article will bring in personal experience of drawing from virtual travel as a solo artist and drawing with others, reflecting on social drawing from Google Maps as part of artistic practice.

How We Stopped and Listened to the Birds is an ongoing urban illustrated reportage that follows my artistic practice as research in Amsterdam during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on informal online interviews with inhabitants and specialists in urban studies. Through this illustrated reportage, I wondered how the illustrator-researcher could embody urban space through digital/online mediums and online interviewing. Transcription refers to creating a written record of spoken or musical expressions. However, it falls short when it comes to interpreting these online conversations in illustration. Besides transcribing, the process of creating the illustrated reportage dealt with imagining the entanglement of memories, stories and geographies provided in the participants’ words and expressions in hopes of creating a sense of place in an affective storyworld. The transcribing of these online interviews in illustration reflects the interviewees’ perspectives and experiences and, simultaneously, my interpretation and reconceptualization of space. Consequently, How We Stopped and Listened to the Birds becomes a privileged space for discussion where the urban illustrations can disrupt official narratives of urban space by containing simultaneous traces of reality and imagination and creating a unique affective atmosphere between both.

This article provides insight into the notion of betweenship as a state experienced by transracial Korean adoptees and the artistic expression of betweenship when mediated in illustration. It criticizes the transactional economy of international adoption, with a focus on adoptions between Europe and South Korea and exemplifies how Korean adoptees have both been portrayed and how they are themselves portraying decolonizing themes in the narratives of adoption by voicing sociopolitical aspects of gender, race and class through their autobiographical images and stories.