Book Cover Artist Profile: David Chandler
Meet David Chandler, the artist behind the cover artwork for Bristol Green Walks, as he discusses his creative process, publishing experience, and the places that inspire his work.
Bristol Green Walks cover art by David Chandler
1. How did you become involved in creating the cover artwork for Bristol Green Walks?
Author, Sue Cullimore, is a dear and long-standing friend of the family. Being invited by her to create the cover art for Bristol Green Walks made me very happy.
2. Tell us about the cover artwork. How did you create it and what was your process for creating it?
The artwork was created on iPad with Procreate. Cutting and pasting digitally is very close to collage, in my view, which I’ve always enjoyed, with the added advantage that I can save every element on a different layer and make endless tweaks and alterations. My first idea isn’t always going to be my best, of course, whilst deadlines need to be met!
3. Were there any particular challenges in creating artwork for a book cover?
Unlike a fine art piece, the work isn’t complete until the title, blurb and bar code are not only in place, but in the right place. Many people were involved in the creation of Bristol Green Walks and the artist has to temper his own whims with the vision of the author, the requirements of the job and the expertise and experience of others. Whatever the artist thinks about their work, it’s ultimately a collaboration. Fortunately, I like that idea.
4. Tell us about your other experience in the world of book publishing? For example, you produced the Tate: Master Watercolour book. Have you produced artwork for other book covers before?
Back in the eighties and nineties, I worked on a couple of children’s book titles and produced cover art for LP’s and CD’s, but I didn’t really have a clue about what I was doing. The penny dropped for me when I started working for Yapp Brothers, who wanted more than seventy illustrations plus cover artwork for their annual wine list. Two years later, they asked me again and we won a Wine List of the Year award. I worked with them for ten years and I can’t tell you how many covers and wine bottles I painted during that time. You can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike; you just get on with the job in the hope that you’ll cotton on to something in the process. For Tate: Master Watercolour, I painted more than seventy watercolours for the book, of which, thirty made the cut and for each one, the painting process had to be fully documented with step-by-step photos and accompanying texts. While I was working, I’d remind myself that JMW Turner produced more than 24,000 watercolours in his lifetime and that John Singer Sargent painted more than 200 of Venice, alone!
5. As a local artist, what does Bristol mean to you creatively?
It’s the collision between Bristol’s urban and green spaces and its waterways that intrigues me. You’re always happening upon something unexpected. I live in Frome at the moment, but I wrote a play for BBC radio 4 that was set in eighteenth century Hotwells, which marked the beginning of my relationship with the city. While I was researching it, I learned that Humphry Davy and Samuel Taylor Coleridge used to venture up to Clifton Down to sniff nitrous oxide from a black, japanned bag and write poetry. Some things never change!
About David Chandler
David Chandler was born on a council estate in Exeter in 1954. He went to grammar school, joined the local church choir and during his adolescence, sang his way from treble and alto to tenor and bass. At school, meanwhile, he played the clarinet, joined a rock band and disappointed his teachers. Although he loved to draw, his A level results were mediocre and he subsequently survived art college for one year only. His journey back to art in the 1990s was a long and arduous one that took in working in a Soho art shop and the fruit and flower department of Fortnum and Mason, voiceover work for J Walter Thompson, running a small design business for the music industry, writing pop songs for Wang Chung and plays and documentaries for BBC radio and Channel 4 TV.
By the time the council estate on which he was born had been demolished, he was teaching adults how to paint and draw, beginning with one class of six students which, in two years, grew to eleven classes with more than two hundred students. He went on to co-found Frome Community Education CIC and lead painting courses in France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, which culminated in a Channel 4 documentary and the collapse of his twenty-year marriage, during which time, he had raised four daughters.
He won the Bax Award at the Black Swan Open Art Show in 2010 and was a finalist in the Holburne Portrait Competition 2012. He presented more than seventy episodes of Seeing Things, a radio show for Frome FM about the visual arts and was a regular contributor to Future Publishing’s Paint and Draw magazine. In 2018, he began work on a commission from Ilex publishers to produce a practical book on watercolours in the Tate archive. Tate: Master Watercolours is available worldwide with translations in Spanish and Korean. He has also illustrated and self-published a juvenile novel, Violet Peck and the Stupid, Stupid Dog.
Find out more: www.davidchandler.net
12 easy walks around Bristol’s green spaces
Includes:
Maps
Detailed walk instructions
Photos
Nature notes
History & heritage
Family-friendly ideas
And more…
This book brings together 12 short walks – each around 2-4 miles – exploring the many green spaces across Bristol. From wooded valleys and wildflower meadows to reclaimed industrial sites now returned to nature, formal parkland and local nature reserves.
These walks have been selected for relatively easy walking and accessibility, with options for shortcuts, detours and extensions. As well as detailed walk descriptions and route maps, each walk has accompanying information on local history and heritage, nature notes, plus ideas and activities for families and children to help get the most out of your walk. There are also suggestions for public transport links and nearby car parking, plus ideas for refreshment stops along the way.
Bristol is a city with a wealth of green spaces and you don't need to go far to take a walk in nature. Walking in green spaces has many benefits for health and well-being, and it can also be an enjoyable way of discovering new parts of the city and finding out about its history and wildlife. If you want to immerse yourself in Bristol’s green spaces and discover something new along the way, Bristol Green Walks is the ideal first step.