Desmond Ward Digby (4 January 1933 – 10 April 2015) was a New Zealand-born Australian stage designer, painter and illustrator of children's books.
Born in Auckland in 1933, [1] Digby was educated at Mount Albert Grammar School from 1946 to 1950. He then studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts [2] and joined the New Zealand Players as a stage designer after graduation. In 1955 he was awarded a scholarship to study theatre in London at the Slade School of Art. He moved to Australia in 1959. [3]
Digby worked as a set and costume designer with Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet and the Elizabethan Trust Opera. [2] [4] He produced a head-dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl . [3]
As an illustrator, he won the 1971 picture book of the year award from the Children's Book Council of Australia, as well as the Critici in Erba Prize for illustration, for his 1970 illustrated version of Banjo Paterson's Waltzing Matilda . [2] Between 1967 and 1989 he provided the illustrations for the series of children's books Bottersnikes and Gumbles written by Sam Wakefield. [2] He also designed covers for novels by Nobel laureate Patrick White, with whom he was close friends. [4]
Painted works by Digby are held by most of the major Australian galleries. [3]
Sir Quentin Saxby Blake, is an English cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and children's writer. He has illustrated over 300 books, including 18 written by Roald Dahl, which are among his most popular works. For his lasting contribution as a children's illustrator he won the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. From 1999 to 2001, he was the inaugural British Children's Laureate. He is a patron of the Association of Illustrators.
Graham Percy was a New Zealand-born artist, designer and illustrator. His work was the subject of The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy, a major posthumous exhibition of his work which was shown at galleries throughout New Zealand including City Gallery Wellington, Gus Fisher Gallery Auckland, Sarjeant Gallery Whanganui, the Rotorua Museum and the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill.
Events from the year 1902 in art.
Kristian Fredrikson was a New Zealand-born Australian stage and costume designer working in ballet, opera and other performing arts. His work was acclaimed for its sumptuous, jewel-like quality, and a sensuous level of detail.
Martin Honeysett was an English cartoonist and illustrator.
Shaun Tan is an Australian artist, writer and film maker. He won an Academy Award for The Lost Thing, a 2011 animated film adaptation of a 2000 picture book he wrote and illustrated. Other books he has written and illustrated include The Red Tree and The Arrival.
Gordon Frederick Browne was an English artist and a prolific illustrator of children's books in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was a meticulous craftsman and went to a great deal of effort to ensure that his illustrations were accurate. He illustrated six or seven books a year in addition to a huge volume of magazine illustration.
Sydney [Sam] Alexander Wakefield was an Australian writer. He was best known for the Bottersnikes and Gumbles series of children's books.
Bottersnikes and Gumbles are fictitious creatures in a series of children's books by Australian writer S. A. Wakefield and illustrator Desmond Digby. Four books were published between 1967 and 1989. The series is considered a classic of Australian children's literature and has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. A television adaptation of the same name has aired on Netflix and terrestrial television in 2015 and 2016.
Pamela Kay Allen is a New Zealand children's writer and illustrator. She has published over 50 picture books since 1980. Sales of her books have exceeded five million copies.
Colin Edward Thompson is an English-Australian writer and illustrator of children's books. He has had over 70 works published and also draws pictures for jigsaw puzzles. In 2004, Thompson was awarded the Aurealis Award in the children's long fiction category for his novel How to Live Forever.
Bronwyn Bancroft is an Aboriginal Australian artist, administrator, book illustrator, and among the first three Australian fashion designers to show their work in Paris. She was born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, and trained in Canberra and Sydney.
Desmond is a given name and a surname, derived from the Irish place-name Desmond, an anglicization of the Irish Deas-Mhumhna. The Irish peerages of Ormonde, Desmond, and Thomond represented the old sub-kingdoms of East, South, and North Munster, respectively. South Munster existed as an independent territory between 1118 and 1543. The title of Earl of Desmond in the Peerage of Ireland originates in 1628; it is currently held by Alexander Feilding, 12th Earl of Denbigh.
Sara Fanelli is a British artist and illustrator, best known for her children's picture books.
Ethel Louise Spowers was an Australian artist associated with the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. She was especially known for her linocuts, which are included in the collections of major Australian and British Art Galleries. She was also a founder of the Contemporary Art Society, promoting modern art in Australia.
Bottersnikes and Gumbles is an animated television series which first aired on 7TWO in Australia and CBBC in the United Kingdom. The cast includes Jason Callender, Richard Grieve, Jeff Rawle, Kathryn Drysdale and Miriam Margolyes. It was released on Netflix in North America on 19 August 2016 but was re-dubbed with American accents.
Albert Henry Ullin was a German Australian bookseller and the founder of Australia's first children's bookstore, The Little Bookroom. He nurtured emerging children's writers and illustrators.
Desmond W. Helmore is a New Zealand artist and illustrator, known both for his fine art and for his scientific work depicting insects, not least illustrating the New Zealand Arthropod Collection. One of the country's most noted and prolific biological illustrators, over 1000 of his illustrations of insects were published in research papers from 1976 to 2006.
Lauren Marriott is a New Zealand illustrator, comics artist, sculptor, and graphic designer. She often draws under the pseudonym Ralphi.
Paul Morin is a Canadian artist and children's book illustrator. Morin started painting in 1977 before working as a freelancer throughout the 1980s. In 1990, Morin began his children's book illustrative career and had contributed to twenty books by the mid-2010s. Of his illustrations, Morin won the 1990 Governor General's Award for English-language children's illustration with The Orphan Boy. He also received the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award for The Orphan Boy in 1991 and The Dragon's Pearl in 1993. As an artist, Morin established multiple art galleries in Ontario from the late 2000s to early 2010s. He also designed the food packaging for the maple leaf cream cookies for Dare Foods.