Edinburgh College lecturer's roman-inspired mosaic illustration takes top prize at World Illustration Awards
An Edinburgh College lecturer has won an international design award after his Roman mosaic illustration was selected from thousands of entries.
Art and Design lecturer Glen McBeth, who has worked at the College for 15 years, won the 2024 Association of Illustrators (AOI) Members Award at the World Illustration Awards earlier this month, for his response to the question ‘what did they do for deodorant in the olden days?’.
Glen said: “It was amazing and completely unexpected. It was an honour to be shortlisted and gain this recognition from such a prestigious awards body, and to be picked out from 5500 entries from all over the world.”
Glen’s brief was to illustrate an article for BBC History Magazine that asked what people used before deodorants, taking inspiration from a quote by Roman poet Ovid, who in 'The Art of Love', said that one should avoid against letting the 'rude goat' find its way beneath your arms.
To create his illustration, Glen first sketched out the idea that he had, scanned it into his computer, before meticulously colouring in each of the individual mosaic tiles until his design was brought to life.
“I was really pleased with how the pastiche of a Roman mosaic turned out,” Glen said. “It was a great opportunity to merge historical literature with my own style. In total, I spent about three days working on the design, spread across a few weeks.”
Glen currently teaches the HND Visual Communication: Illustration course part-time at the College’s Granton Campus, while spending the other half of the week continuing to work for himself as a freelance illustrator.
The World Illustration Awards is a global celebration of illustration and is organised by the Association of Illustrators (AOI), which is the professional body for illustration in the UK. The Awards are split into two groups: New Talent and Professional. All work, commissioned or self-initiated, is accepted across the ten categories as long as it has been created within the past year.