Borin Van Loon (born 1951 in
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
) is a British illustrator and comic book artist, best known for his illustrations for the ''
Introducing...'' series of graphic books on complex subjects. He is an author, collagist, and surrealist painter, and has worked for a wide variety of clients in editorial, publishing and promotion. He has created an eclectic collage/cartoon mural on the subject of DNA and genetics for the Health Matters Gallery in London's
Science Museum.
Van Loon published ''The
Bart Dickon Omnibus'' of his hero's derring-do in 2005 comprising a surrealist collage graphic novel.
Roger Sabin, a writer about
comics
a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...
and lecturer at
Central St. Martins
Central Saint Martins is a public tertiary art school in London, England. It is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of ...
in
London,
England, said of the Bart Dickon series:
Van Loon's collage comic strip approach to storytelling relies almost solely upon found images, serendipity in research, and the use of a narrative to bind the images, speech and thought bubbles, and text boxes together. The roots of collage comic-strip can be found in the sound-collage experiments of
Ron Geesin, the animations of
Monty Python
Monty Python (also collectively known as the Pythons) were a British comedy troupe who created the sketch comedy television show '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', which first aired on the BBC in 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four ...
(during the
Terry Gilliam era), the surrealist novels of
Max Ernst (
Une Semaine de Bonté and 'La femme de 100 têtes), the agit-prop visuals of the
Situationists, the
psychedelic posters and graphics of
Martin Sharp and the satires of
Biff.
Originally appearing as separate strips under the title 'A Severed Head' (a nod to the
Iris Murdoch novel),
Bart Dickon appeared in
Brain Damage
Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating t ...
, Talking Turkey,
Sun Zoom Spark and
The Chap magazines. The author gathered a number of these comics, reworked and added new material to create a graphic novella.
Van Loon illustrated ''Capitalism for Beginners'', ''Darwin for Beginners'', and ''DNA for Beginners'' (in eclectic documentary comic book format) for
Writers and Readers
For Beginners LLC is a publishing company based in Danbury, Connecticut, that publishes the ''For Beginners'' graphic nonfiction series of documentary comic books on complex topics, covering an array of subjects on the college level. Meant to ap ...
in the early 1980s. He has since has illustrated more than a dozen entries in the ''
Introducing...'' series, published by
Icon Books in the UK, including four titles written by
Ziauddin Sardar.
Van Loon has written, designed and illustrated two model-making books: ''DNA: The Marvellous Molecule'', which enables the reader to build a colour model of the ''double-helix'' structure discovered in 1953 by
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical struc ...
and
James D. Watson with
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding o ...
and
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, co ...
; and ''Geodesic Domes'', where the models celebrate the pioneering work of
Buckminster Fuller. He also painted many oil studies and designed the diagrams for the ''Letts Pocket Guide To The Weather''.
''/blankpage'' was a collaborative project with sixteen other artists belonging to Freelance (which Borin chairs) created for Ip-Art 2004. It consisted of a book as an art object with pages in widely varying media, all put together by a bookbinder. ''/blankpage'' now has a permanent home in the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich.
Bibliography
* ''DNA: The Marvellous Molecule'' (Parkwest Pubns), 1991,
* ''Letts Pocket Guide to the Weather'' (written by Eleanor Lawrence, New Holland Publishers Ltd), 1993
* ''Geodesic Domes'' (Parkwest Pubns), 1994,
* ''The
Bart Dickon Omnibus'' (Severed Head Books), 2005,
'' ...For Beginners'' series (
Writers and Readers
For Beginners LLC is a publishing company based in Danbury, Connecticut, that publishes the ''For Beginners'' graphic nonfiction series of documentary comic books on complex topics, covering an array of subjects on the college level. Meant to ap ...
)
* ''Capitalism for Beginners'' (written by
Robert Lekachman
Robert Lekachman (May 12, 1920 – January 14, 1989) was an American progressive economist and academic noted for his interest in social justice. He was noted for his interpretation of John Maynard Keynes's ''The General Theory of Employment, Int ...
), 1981
* ''
Darwin for Beginners'' (written by
Jonathan Miller), 1982
* ''
DNA for Beginners
''DNA for Beginners'', republished as ''DNA: A Graphic Guide to the Molecule that Shook the World'', is a 1983 graphic study guide to DNA written by Professor Israel Rosenfield from the City University of New York with Professor Edward Ziff from ...
'' (written by Israel Rosenfield and Ed Ziff), 1983
'' Introducing...'' series ( Icon Books)
* ''
Introducing Darwin'' (written by
Jonathan Miller), 1992 — re-issue of the 1982 Writers and Readers book, ''Darwin for Beginners''
* ''
Introducing Genetics'' (written by
Steve Jones Steve or Steven Jones may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Steve Jones (English presenter) (born 1945), English musician, disk jockey, television presenter, and voice-over artist
*Steve Jones (musician) (born 1955), English rock and roll guita ...
), 1993
* ''Introducing Buddha'' (written by Jane Hope), 1994
* ''Introducing Sociology'' (written by Richard Osborne), 1996
* ''Introducing Cultural Studies'' (written by
Ziauddin Sardar), 1997
* ''Introducing Mathematics'' (written by
Ziauddin Sardar), 1999
* ''Introducing Science Studies'' (written by
Ziauddin Sardar), 1998
* ''Introducing Eastern Philosophy'' (written by Richard Osborne), 2000
* ''Introducing Media Studies'' (written by
Ziauddin Sardar), 2000
* ''Introducing Critical Theory'' (written by Stuart Sim), 2001
* ''Introducing Hinduism'' (written by Vinay Lal), 2001
* ''Introducing Psychotherapy'' (written by
Nigel C. Benson), 2003
* ''Introducing Statistics'' (written by Eileen Magnello), 2009
See also
*
Introducing Book Series
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Loon, Borin
British illustrators
British comic strip cartoonists
Living people
1951 births