The reason for drawing is not to try and capture battle scenes or explosions, it’s really just an excuse to sit with people and in a completely disarming way listen to them tell their story,” he says. She’s 100 in August and she invited us to her birthday. She lived through the Great Famine – the Holodomor – and the second world war and now she is going through this. She told me she is so worried that she forgets the words to describe how she feels. The anxiety is so great she can’t explain it. It was very moving and I think that is an example of a drawing being a gentle way into sitting with someone and listening to what they’re saying. That’s not to say it can’t be done with a camera, but I hope that drawings offer a different dimension.”

Gary Embury is a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol and an illustrator with over 20 years of experience. Clients include The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Radio Times, Aardman Animations, BBC, BritishTelecom, Barclays Bank, The Economist, New Scientist, The Sunday Times Review, Sunday Times Magazine, Microsoft, Penguin Books, Macmillan, and many other advertising, editorial and publishing clients. Awarded Gold, in Images 30, The Best of British Contemporary Illustration 2006 and took part in a discussion on Radio 4's Front Row program hosted by Kirsty Lang on the future of illustration in the digital age. He is the editor of which showcases and initiates projects in the area of drawn reportage. What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced in your career in the last 12 months and how have you overcome them?

And it can also encompasses Urban Sketching as both may involve sketching from life and on location. The urban sketching movement was started by Gabriel Campanario, a Seattle-based journalist who works for The Seattle Times as a writer and an artist. On his Urban Sketchers blog he invited other artists to contribute regular journalistic sketches showing life as it unfolds. The beauty of reportage is it doesn’t need to be an earth-shattering story. You can find a story in the everyday – or even in a life of crime as I read in The Guardian/ Observer this weekend, ‘ Caught on canvas: how an armed robber turned his life of crime into art’. Matt Booker Drawings from four months in India at the International Institute of Fine Arts in Modinagar, Delhi, the Himalayas and Rajasthan. For sure, there needs to be lots more done there. .A number of years ago there would have been much more prescriptive briefs and projects. I wonder if the expectation that 50 % of the final module is your own self-generated content is the reason there is a resurgence in reportage. People are trying to work out what stories they want to tell and how they want to tell them. Certainly, discussion needs to be there in terms of support in terms of the ethics of what they are doing. People like to tell their story and at the very least it’s a distraction from a difficult life in a refugee camp or a break from the monotony of work. But people think it’s odd, and they ask lots of questions. I sometimes get accused of being a spy… We are looking for Artists to be a part of Reflections 25.4.16, an innovative new cross-media storytelling project, focusing on Nepal in the year since the April 2015 earthquake. We have personal interviews from individuals in Nepal, just waiting for artists to bring their stories to life.

Restrict your location. Narrow your focus. An in-depth study of a small area will be more successful than casting your net too wide by trying to capture everything but only scratching the surface. L.R – Newspapers / magazines are the traditional home for reportage work and you might propose drawing an event that they are likely to cover. Reportage is also used in annual reports and other marketing. The subject-matter you like to draw, such as Anna Cattermole’s Newlyn fishing boats, may be relevant to a particular company or organization whom you could approach and suggest they commission your drawings. L.R- In theory there is a market but in practice you need to search out this sort of commission to make it happen.I find it quite difficult, the exhibition upstairs. (On Gentrification Ridley rd. market drawings) I really love the fact that the pictures aren't being sold, .. because the idea of money changing hands, it does make me a bit uncomfortable, because what about the subject of that picture? what if the subject hadn't been there, there wouldn't be a picture. .. what I want to do with that show is put it up near the market to make more of an issue about the market and how it should be protected and make something happen as a result of these drawings I really do want to do that.... I don't feel comfortable just going away and doing something completely different at the moment, I want to try to make it so it does have an effect. I don't think we should necessarily apologise for wanting to express our opinions, just as the written word is a series of sentences chosen by the journalist and arranged in a certain way. The way in which colour, line, shape is arranged can evoke atmosphere and opinion about something that's being documented,

Materials can be varied for reportage, with the digital proving effective for many. Jenny Soep often using a tablet to capture live music events, and Tim Vyner creating fascinating time lapse films of his drawings. And opportunities keep arising. Vyner gives a mature reflection of how reportage could develop and how technology could impact on the way visual journalism is recorded. Literary reportage often overlaps with other forms of creative non-fiction in the sense that these types also narrate factual events using fictional storytelling techniques and devices. Biography

Following the publication of Reportage Illustration: Visual Journalism, Gary Embury and Mario Minichiello will be discussing reportage drawing at the V&A

We look forward to seeing your artwork. Together we can share real stories and work for positive change here in Nepal! Gary Embury: Is it enough to just passively visually report or sketch without research into a particular issue?

What Liu enjoyed most about studying in the UK was the freedom to experiment. “I think the British approach to education has had a great influence on my illustrations. My teachers at BCU constantly encouraged me and helped to build my independence as a practitioner,” says the illustrator. “That was very important to me.” Now that I have immersed myself in the subject of reportage illustration I can see the impact and vital nature of the wart artist. Because you’re almost always doing it by permission of the people around you – they’re watching you as you do it – it’s honest. You can’t make it up at one end and that pays off at the other, when an audience looks at it. The way our news is delivered at the moment, it’s often mistrusted or known to be manipulated, so in a funny sort of way – even through it’s incredibly traditional, and could be made up – drawing carries real weight.You’ve worked for charities a lot. Lots of illustrators feel that they should lower their fees, or work at no cost for charities – is this the case for you? The primary purpose of reportage is to elicit an emotional response from its readers. By immersing themselves in the experiences of their subjects, writers of reportage comment on the bigger picture of current affairs about culture, politics, and society.