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WORK TITLE: The Faerie Isle
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WEBSITE: https://dermotflynn.com/
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PERSONAL
Born in Ireland.
EDUCATION:National College of Art and Design, degree in visual communication; University of Brighton, M.A. (illustration).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Artist, illustrator and designer. National College of Art and Design, teacher. Worked for various companies as an illustrator and designer, including Pentagram, Paramount, Apple, Disney, New Yorker, Guardian, Macmillan, Adidas, Vodafone, Vogue, HSBC, Christies, Harpers Bazaar, Winkreative, Canongate, Toyota Japan, Oxford University Press, UBS, Irish Times, StudioAKA, Pernod-Ricard, and British Airways.
AWARDS:Macmillan Prize for Illustration; Cannes Advertising Festival, Silver Lion; An Post Irish Book Awards, Children’s Senior Category.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 2025, review of The Faerie Isle: Tales and Traditions of Ireland’s Forgotten Folklore, p. 47.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2025, review of The Faerie Isle;
ONLINE
Children’s Books Ireland, https://childrensbooksireland.ie/ (January 2025), review of Fia and the Last Snow Deer.
Dermot Flynn homepage, https://dermotflynn.com/ (June 15, 2025).
I am an Irish artist and illustrator who has worked with clients such as Paramount, Apple, Disney, Apple, Penguin, Walker Books, Adidas, the New Yorker, Vogue, and the Guardian. Since returning to Dublin after spending twenty years living and working in London, my work has become more and more concerned with the light and darkness in Ireland’s people, humour, everyday life and culture – and in particular its history and folklore.
I have won numerous awards for my illustration work, including the Macmillan Prize for Illustration, a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival and most recently the Children’s Senior Category at the An Post Irish Book Awards.
When not drawing, painting or reading I can usually be found standing and shivering beside the nearest freezing cold ocean or body of water working up the courage to jump in.
Clients
Adidas · Attitude · British Airways · Christie’s · Custo Barcelona · Dentsu Japan · Disney · Earagail Arts Festival · Harper’s Bazaar · Hodder · HSBC · IPUT Real Estate Dublin · Grand America Hotel · Littlebrown · Macmillan · Mary Portas · New York Life Foundation · Oxford University Press · Paramount · Pentagram · Pernod-Ricard (Jameson) · Queen’s University Belfast · Kinnegar Brewing · Raffinerie · Saatchi & Saatchi · StudioAKA · The Guardian · The Irish Times · The New Yorker · Toyota Japan · Trinity College Dublin · UBS · Vodafone · Vogue · Weir & Sons · Winkreative
For book projects or publishing enquiries please contact Becca Langton at Darley Anderson ; for commercial enquiries please contact me directly on +44 78 1080 2176 / dermot@dermotflynn.com
Dermot Flynn is an artist, illustrator and designer based between Dublin and London. Clients he has worked for include Pentagram, Paramount, Apple, Disney, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Macmillan, Adidas, Vodafone, Vogue, HSBC, Christies, Harpers Bazaar, Winkreative, Canongate, Toyotsa Japan, Oxford University Press, UBS, The Irish Times, StudioAKA, Pernod-Ricard, and British Airways. His work has won numerous awards; including the Macmillan Prize for Children’s Book Illustration and a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival.
Books are my business: Artist, illustrator and designer Dermot Flynn
'Everything I do starts with a drawing, sketching an initial rough idea of how something is going to look'
Books are my business: Artist, illustrator and designer Dermot Flynn
Dermot Flynn's work has won the Macmillan Prize for Children’s Book Illustration and a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival.
Sat, 07 Dec, 2024 - 01:00
Marjorie Brennan
Dermot Flynn is an artist, illustrator, and designer from Drumcondra in Dublin. His clients have included Apple, Disney, The New Yorker, Adidas, and Vogue.
His work has won the Macmillan Prize for Children’s Book Illustration and a Silver Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival.
The most recent book he worked on, Fia and the Last Snow Deer, by Eilish Fisher, won ‘Children’s Book of the Year — Senior’ at the An Post Irish Book Awards.
How did you get into illustrating?
I did a degree in visual communication at the NCAD (National College of Art and Design) about 30 years ago but I didn’t really see illustration as a career. It was essentially graphic design but they had a couple of illustration modules which I always really liked.
I thought I was going to work in film or TV or something like that. Then I got a job with a really good design agency in Dublin, and it got me doing a lot of illustration stuff.
I fell into doing it, and it was the one thing that I could do really quickly and really well.
I moved to the UK, did a masters in illustration in Brighton, got a job in an animation studio, and kept freelancing at the same time.
I wish I could say there had been a plan or strategy to it but it all grew really organically.
Learn more
What does your job involve?
If I’ve got a project on, I will try and do some deep work early in the morning. I always work best for the first three or four hours of the day.
In the afternoon, I’ll do errands, meet some friends, go for a walk or go swimming or to the gym.
I also work in the evenings or late at night. I’ve got this weird body clock thing where I’m kind of an early bird and a night owl.
Then sometimes there will be days where I won’t be at the desk at all.
I also teach at NCAD, which is nice because it lends a bit more structure to the week, and it’s social interaction which is really good.
Everything I do starts with a drawing, sketching an initial rough idea of how something is going to look.
Then it usually gets taken into digital to allow for adjusting or tweaking. I have a huge bank of painted textures that I combine with stuff.
I recently did a course in oil painting and I have gotten back into it. When you are working with analogue, and you go back to working in digital, it feels so much fresher and more exciting. It’s good to do both.
What do you like most about what you do?
Visualising something and then realising it. If I’m working on a book, I read it and it’s like I have a movie playing in my head, and I put scenes down, like the landscape, or what the people are wearing and all of that.
Just having an idea and seeing it develop and change. I also like the variety of stuff I work on.
What do you like least about it?
It can be very precarious. You can have amazing years, and you can have quite lean years. You also have to really manage the solitude.
Then there’s the self-promotion which is something I think the Irish aren’t very good at.
Three desert island books
The first would be The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea, one of the most wonderful books ever written. It starts in an ordinary way, with a boy finding a book in a bookshop, but from there, it gets surreal. It’s Ireland in a microcosm, the darkness and the light, the funny and the sad.
The next is The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a murder mystery about a group of students studying classics at a college in Vermont. it’s just so beautifully written, every sentence, it’s like biting into a bowl of luscious fruit.
The third is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, about a family of circus freaks. It is narrated by the family member who they think is the most boring and ordinary, who is a blind, humpbacked albino dwarf.
They are in such a bizarre environment but they are trying to have a normal family life, and it is about the heartache and the joy of that. It would be a dream project to illustrate any of those books.
instagram: @dermotflynn
Home » Illustrators » Dermot Flynn
Dermot Flynn
Illustrator
Dermot Flynn is an Irish artist and illustrator who has worked with clients such as Paramount, Apple, Disney, Apple, Penguin, Walker Books, Adidas, the New Yorker, Vogue, and the Guardian. Since returning to Dublin after spending twenty years living and working in London, his work has become more and more concerned with the light and darkness in Ireland's people, humour, everyday life and culture - and in particular its history and folklore.
When not drawing, painting or reading he can usually be found standing and shivering beside the nearest freezing cold ocean or body of water working up the courage to jump in.
Flynn, Dermot THE FAERIE ISLE Candlewick (Children's None) $18.99 2, 4 ISBN: 9781536240719
A collection of Irish myths and legends, some encouraging, most cautionary.
Irish folklore is populated by faeries, or "the good people," as you'd best call them. They include creatures great and small, those of the land and of the sea, those who act as harbingers, and others who frankly just don't like to be bothered. Each well-researched entry includes a page of general description covering the creature's historical origins and traditional behaviors and temperament, as well as lessons to be learned, followed by a brief tale. "The Queen's Shoes" tells of a tiny leprechaun shoemaker who rewards a kindly young shepherd, while "At the Crossroads" centers on a brave young girl's encounter with the Headless Horseman. Quinn's writing has a folksy, intimate tone; readers will feel as though they're huddled by the fireside, listening to a gifted storyteller holding an audience spellbound. Even folklore enthusiasts will find unique depths within each jam-packed entry. Reminiscent of Stephen Gammell's work, Flynn's illustrations are grotesquely gorgeous--like the fae they depict, they are texturally rich, glowing with a unique allure and just a touch unsettling. Her use of color and negative space is haunting, well paired with the creatures depicted.
Fantastic in all respects. (glossary)(Folktales. 7-13)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Flynn, Dermot: THE FAERIE ISLE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A823102210/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d61e4137. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.
* The Faerie Isle: Tales and Traditions of Ireland's Forgotten Folklore.
By Sine Quinn. Illus. by Dermot Flynn.
Feb. 2025. 80p. Candlewick, $18.99 (9781536240719).
Gr. 4-8. 398.2.
In the introduction to this striking, thoughtful work, Patricia Fforde, Ireland's Laureate na nOg (Laureate for Youth), gives a light warning to readers: the fairies found in this work won't be the cute type, she cautions, because Irish fairies are "more likely to be shape-shifters, tricksters, or revenge-seeking, lesson-teaching fiends." The entries that follow, which are adorned with beautiful, nature-filled watercolors, showcase a darker "good folk" (the fairies' preferred term for themselves, we're informed) than is often found in books about Irish folklore and fairies and their ilk generally. Entries are in two parts, with the first describing beliefs about the beings--mermaids, giants, wild water horses, changelings, and more--and discussing nuances from different parts of Ireland. The second part of each entry is a related folktale told in accessible and engaging language and sprinkled, like the information in the nonfiction sections, with Irish words. A glossary and a solid list of sources close the work. Overall, this is a big success and will be great in classes that are looking at folktale imagery and motifs that occur across cultures. For independent enjoyment, recommend to readers who like their fairy tales to come with a little darkness.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Thornton, Henrietta. "The Faerie Isle: Tales and Traditions of Ireland's Forgotten Folklore." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 9-10, Jan. 2025, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829739419/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=28dfb480. Accessed 20 Apr. 2025.
Fia and the Last Snow Deer
This beautiful verse novel follows Fia and her beloved snow deer, Solas, as they set out on an impossible quest, across pre-historic Ireland, to negotiate with the powerful Deer Mother for the return of the sun after years of endless winter. Fia and her deer have been bound together since their birth on the same Solstice thirteen years ago and by a prophecy of sacrifice, which Fia doesn’t fully understand. Now though, with her village close to starvation, Fia and Solas are sent by the village Shaman to make this journey to bring back the sun.
This is truly a jewel of a book, with the illustrations by Dermot Flynn echoing the movement from darkness to light as well as evoking the prehistoric setting with his style of illustration. There was something moving about the sheer darkness of some of the pages when combined with Eilish Fisher’s powerful story. The language is accessible yet lyrical in parts making this an excellent introduction to the verse novel form. The spaces and line breaks at certain parts highlight the deep well of emotion within the novel, as Fia moves towards the culmination of her journey.
The book’s strength is not only in capturing universal themes; the danger of fear, the strength to be found in community and family, the movement towards adulthood, but also in showing how truly timeless these themes are by tapping into our prehistoric past. A must-read for the depths of winter.