Florence Bentley

Illustration - BA (Hons)

Over the last year of Florence’s illustration degree, she began to realise that her work centred around nature, landscape, and atmosphere, as well as a love of drawing. Through drawing, she likes to play with light sources, shadows, and a sense of scale to capture an atmosphere. Exploring composition is a part of the process that she enjoys, taking lots of inspiration from filmmaking, through looking at tv, film, and music videos. She loves the idea that handmade illustration can draw on cinematic devices to communicate an environment and sense of time and place, particularly using landscape.

The images seen here are from her Final Major Project, where she produced a set of illustrations inspired by the book Once by Morris Gleitzman; a beautifully told story following Felix, a young Jewish boy, on his journey through Poland during WW2. The story is aimed at older children and does not shy away from the horrors of war, however seeing these events through Felix’s eyes helps to maintain a sense of innocence and hope. She aimed to use her interests in landscape, atmosphere, and filmic composition to capture a sense of Felix’s experience, rather than the events of war itself.