News and reviews
A brief round-up of current news stories, exhibitions and competitions – plus new books, reader offers, catalogues and websites, auction highlights  and dates you need to remember.

Notebook
Known to her Instagram followers as “Queen of Darktown”, artist Sharon Hannah records quirky details, interiors and scenes from daily life in her sketchbooks. She explains why she has kept many of these visual diaries over the years and how they inform her art and refresh her memory.

Kathleen Hale
Despite her fame and popularity as the creator of Orlando the Marmalade Cat, Kathleen Hale always believed that her true vocation was painting and often felt conflicted about the success of her children’s books and their characters. She was friends with some of the greatest artists of the age and often found herself divided between the Bohemian life and society she loved and her husband and children.

Exhibition: Gilbert White’s Selborne
The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White is one of the most re-published books ever printed. Thomas Bewick’s edition set the bar high and his legacy has been built on by artists including Eric Ravilious and John Nash. An exhibition of illustrations and newly commissioned art inspired by the book at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester has been postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, however we take a look at the work that will go on display when it reopens.

Illustrating Dracula 
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the most well-known and influential of all the Gothic novels, inspiring films, graphic novels and books. But how has it fared in in the hands of illustrators and have they managed to break away from the influence of the famous films? We examine some of the most interesting interpretations and look at what they tell us about the world’s most notorious vampire.

Interview: Levi Pinfold
With the publication of his first picture book, The Django, Levi Pinfold began to accumulate accolades and awards in equal measure. More followed with each subsequent title. He explains his inspirations and takes us through his recent work, illustrating 20th-anniversary editions of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books and producing soft, luminous landscapes for David Almond’s The Dam.

Sir Francis Carruthers Gould
Moving easily from political cartoons parodying Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland to children’s books and verse, Sir Francis Carruthers Gould was a versatile and talented artist with a lifelong love of wildlife and nature. He launched his career caricaturing colleagues and satirising his boredom working at the London Stock Exchange and clearly found his true calling – continuing to contribute illustrations to magazines long after he officially retired.

Graduate  round-up
Two young artists fresh from their degree courses at The University of Gloucestershire discuss their current work, their inspirations and their ambitions for their future artistic careers.

Resources
Random Spectacular at the Fry
A major collaboration between the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden and online print gallery and publisher St Judes was scheduled to open in April. Hardly had the pictures been hung, when the gallery was closed during the lockdown. However the exhibition will be there when the gallery re-opens, and in the meantime St Judes is publishing a new Random Spectacular journal, based on the exhibition plus new work by contemporary artists.