Isobel Dyson
Documentation
I entered this dimension.
2017
2nd year project on waste in the river which lead to a lot of research on the fashion industry and a couple up-cycling workshops.
1997
I entered the Netherlands and started studying my degree; Interdisciplinary Arts.
2018
september 2019
october 2019
Two up-cycling workshops for 15 year olds at the Bernard Lievegoed School in Maastricht.
The beginning of 3rd year. A year of complete freedom and a couple panics.
I built a website that I ended up completely changing 11 months later. I also started my research on children's books.
november 2019
also november 2019
Bella and I gave a talk at an event hosted by the Research Collective for Decolonising Fashion.
also also november 2019
Finished writing my position paper wherein I analysed ten different children's books, their text styles, illustrative styles and how they were combined to bring across some kind of message, or none at all.
CLICK here to see the whole paper
january 2020
Working on storytelling and different illustrative techniques.
also january 2020
Contacting partners to help me with my process. Super lucky to have Karlien de Villiers agree to help me with my illustrations and Helen Brain to help me with my writing and storytelling.
Haha, if only I knew...
8 february 2020
My flight to South Africa!!!
february 2020
Enjoying being in South Africa and beginning working on the story and illustrations.
february 2020
Struggled more than I thought to get into writing. Found it quite difficult to balance the fun and fairly light aspects of children's books with such a big message. I went through many drafts and ideas before I finally settled on Nolly and the Nongos. Here are some extracts from the other ideas.
Was initially planning on doing a small exhibition at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht as my CPE (Collaborative Public Event) ... before everything fell apart.
march 2020
I didn't like any of the stories I was coming up with and I felt very restricted by them in terms of illustrative freedom. I wanted to create a story that had a lightness to it and not be weighed down by a message that I was trying to force into the story. I realised that that was exactly the problem I was too focussed on how to translate my message into a book and not just enjoying the process of writing and coming up with ideas. So I let go and tried to be more playful and as soon as I did that the story that has become my final version was written in half an hour.
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march 2020
Throughout this whole time the threat of the Corona Virus was getting gradually bigger. I was avidly following the news along with everyone else, as well as, listening and discussing the millions of different theories and conspiracies. But it was only when the first case was reported in South Africa, not very far from where I was staying, that I realised how much things were going to change. A week later President Cyril Ramaphosa announced he was closing all schools and more importantly for me, closing the borders.
20 march 2020
I flew back to the UK a month before I was supposed to leave ;((( I was very sad.
april 2020
April I was a bit lost and distracted by everything that was going on. But I managed to do a drawing challenge and also complete the layout for illustrations.
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may 2020
I soon realised how much work is actually needed to illustrate a whole book so I took the option to graduate in August rather than June. I was experimenting with different techniques. I eventually settled on gouache which I had never used before and it took me a while to get the hang of it.
In these images you can see that I was testing out collage and also black liner. The collage didn't really work with the gouache and the liner was also covered quite easily so I quickly realised it was a waste of time. Even though I like how the liner looks on its own. Maybe I can experiment with combining the two in a different way for my next project.
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june 2020
To be honest June is not very clear in my mind. But I was probably just painting.
I really liked how these houses turned out because I didn't want them to be too realistic. They had to have a bit of a fantasy element to it because I didn't want the story to be specific to one place.
july 2020
In November I met another illustrator who lives in Maastricht. She told me about an international illustration competition in Belgium that also accepts people without illustrative experience. But when the time came for me to check the guidelines I realised that they asked for a maximum of 24 pages and I was working toward a layout that had 28 pages. So I had to change many things so that it would make sense with only 24 pages. And once I had done that I realised I definitely preferred the second layout to my original one. So with not very much time left I scrapped quite a few of my finished spreads and painted 8, 2 page spreads in 2,5 weeks. That's what you get when you are a bit of a perfectionist.
I submitted my story to the competition and I will hear back from them in September.
Desperately working on 4 spreads at the same time.
During August I was still finishing off the paintings. Doing last touches scanning, fixing again, scanning, editing on the computer as well as working the website. Meanwhile my CPE (collaborative public event) loomed ever closer. Throughout the second half of this insanely long year I had many ideas about what my CPE and they fluctuated between large elaborate events and very simple ones. The fluctuations depended on partners saying no and then the virus, my extension and also my serious lack lustre attitude toward doing something digital when I had made very physical book and I am in general a tactile person.
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Initially, as I mentioned, I wanted to work with the Bonnefanten to create a small exhibition and opening venue for my book but they said no even before Corona.
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When Corona hit I was lost for ideas but because I was in England I tried to reach out to organisations in Nottingham like the Nottingham Women's Centre and the Public Library but at that time they were both overrun with organisational issues related to the virus so they were unavailable to work with. I then went back to the connections I had in Maastricht and reached out to FashionClash and the Artist and the Others. They were both much more receptive and FashionClash offered to let me use their instagram account to do a live interview with a designer. But a week later I extended to August and the thought of the CPE faded a little from my mind as I focussed mostly on the book. The designer also ended up telling me she wouldn't be able to do the interview as she was busy with other projects.
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august 2020
(the cpe process)
Then sometime in July I had a sudden flash of inspiration in a desperate hope that the virus was slowing down. I decided I wanted to create a huge public piece of art in the middle of the middle of the Vrijtof replicating one of the images from my book. I wanted to create a huge pile of clothes overflowing out of a wardrobe onto a bed and then make an event around it with a reading of my story and then a clothes swap with all the clothes that I had collected. This got me super excited but I soon realised that there was no way this was possible time wise, but also our CPEs had to be online (serious frustration)...
My next idea after I had gotten over that dissapointent was to do an interview with the famous South African children's book author Dr Gcina Mhlophe on activsim through storytelling. We had had contact in February and she had agreed to help me with my writing process but the virus got in the way of that again. She took a while to reply but eventually her answer was a very kind no.
At this point I was a bit exhausted of the letters CPE so I have decided to keep it simple. Which is why my CPE is now an online gallery of everything that I have done and focusses solely on my book. I am partnering with FashionClash to advertise its launch through their instagram with 23.2K followers. I will make this interactive, as well as, the multiple contact forms scattered around my website.
So that is what you will find here. I hope you enjoy it. And if you feel as though I've left anything out then please feel free to contact me with any questions/ thoughts/opinions/ love letters... It's up to you <3
Rest in peace Paulo <3