Hasta La Ideas

The second annual East London Comics & Arts Festival takes place this weekend at Bethnal Green’s York Hall and includes screenings, workshops, live drawings and talks on graphic art and illustration.

ELCAF was founded last year by Nobrow – an East London publishing house specialising in design and illustration books – to showcase the work of young and established artists from London and beyond.

Production house Blink and animation studios Not to Scale and Studio AKA will be hosting free screenings throughout the day, and a rolling line-up of illustrators including Day Job Collective and Cachete Jack will be working on a banquet-themed illustration.

As well as a performance from poet and illustrator Matthew Hodson (Matt the Horse), Pebble Island author Jon McNaught and New York-based artist Andy Rementer, who has produced illustrations for Apartamento, New York Magazine and MTV, will be talking about their work.

A panel of speakers from publishers Nobrow, SelfMadeHero and Jonathan Cape will discuss the pros and cons of publishing and self-publishing with independent authors, and artists including Jack Teagle, Nick Edwards and Luke Pearson will be delivering talks on character design for comics, toys and animation.

Pearson will also be hosting a live drawing battle in the afternoon, and there will be a range of free hands-on workshops teaching visitors how to make mutant toys, pop-up books, comics and newspapers.

To celebrate the festival, Nobrow has commissioned prints by 10 artists: Icinori, Dominic Kesterton, Telegramme, Tom Frost, Eda Akaltun, Ping Zhu, Paul Paetzel and Ana Albero, Planeta Tangerina, Rementer and Hodson.

Each artist was asked to pick a two-colour palette from red, yellow or blue, and have produced some great prints featuring robots, bears, cats and cockerels. The prints will be available for £15 at the festival but you can view them in advance on ELCAF’s website.

ELCAF runs from 10.15 until 7pm on Saturday, June 22. Tickets cost £3 and are available on the door or online. For more info and to see the full programme and exhibitor list, visit elcaf.co.uk

Images (from top): illustration by Andy Rementer; last year’s ELCAF; prints by Kesterton, Rementer and Icinori.

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

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