Bologna, 3rd edition

Recap of BCBF 2025

Hello everyone,

It’s been a few weeks since I came back from Italy and it’s finally time to gather my notes and write down a few impressions of this year’s BCBF.

This year only four members of Illoguild made it to Bologna and we got together on Sunday evening at a local book store for Felicita Sala’s book signing; it was a great opportunity to meet the artist we all admire and to see some of her original illustrations up close 😊

Illoguild from top left: Jen Jamieson, Katie Stack, me and Tammy Gray

Day 1

Monday started with a massive traffic jam on the way to the fair while many roads were closed for construction as the city of Bologna builds a brand new tram line (once it’s up and running the way to the fair will hopefully be much quicker). We still managed to get to the wall in time to stick some posters, only to find that this year the surface of the wall has been covered with a very smooth, fabric like surface that would not hold most types of sticky tape, causing large portions of the wall hangings to peal off after only a couple of hours. It was heartbreaking to see all that effort and money artists invested in their presentation materials, now crumbled to the floor… luckily my posters held on, attached with a strong double sided tape, and I managed to refill my business card pockets each day.

This year my agent set up several meetings with editors at the fair so I skipped the portfolio review lines and instead attended as many masterclass lectures and workshops as I could; the first one was Bad drawings, where artists shared their tips about approaching sketching practice, embracing mistakes and getting back the joy and playfulness of every day drawing experiments. One of the speakers was Naomi Tipping, one of the artists behind three materials challenge.

This year I had my postcards printed with three different designs and whenever I had a chance to hand them out to publishers at the booths I asked them to pick their favourite; the one with treehouse got most attention but penguins and cat in daisies weren’t far behind.

In the evening it was time for a short stroll in the town centre and a nice plate of lasagna bolognese.

Day 2

First workshop I attended on Tuesday was with author illustrator Loes Riphagen - she talked about her character design and showed the way she works with acrylic gouache and greasy pastels. In a world oversaturated with AI generated images, illustrations done with traditional techniques got a lot of attention and were featured in many accompanying exhibitions around the fair - the ones that I found especially enchanting were fibre art illustrations from a Chinese artist Limi Xiao.

Left: Loes Riphagen’s workshop. Centre and right: illustrations from a book My Blue by Limi Xiao.

In the afternoon it was time for highly anticipated workshop by Felicita Sala - those of us who didn’t get a spot at the table sat around on the floor, listening at the doors, trying to capture at least some of Felicita’s magic. She spoke about her techniques of character development, showed different exercises she uses to spark her creativity and at the end she went around the room, commenting on everyone’s sketches. I used two of given prompts, “king” and “rocket”, to sketch some fun variations, playing with contrast and colour (whatever my limited pencil case allowed…)

Day ended with more delicious pasta, followed by gelato - it was impossible to pick one flavour so we had to come back for seconds.

Day 3

Wednesday was a day packed with meetings and I got to show my picture book dummy and board book pitches to several editors who gave me very valuable feedback - some asked about potential stories behind certain illustrations from my portfolio and I am now working on a few book ideas 😊

On Wednesday I also met with my new agent, Erzsi Deàk, and at the SCBWI event later that evening we got a chance to chat over drinks and nibbles - perfect ending to a fantastic season three of Bologna adventure! The fair wouldn’t have been complete without a selfie with Yves Kervoelen, life and soul of BCBF - his bingo card had us all super motivated and energised and if you’ve missed it, you can check more about it here.

Left: with Erzsi Deàk from Hen&ink Literary Studio, right: with Yves Kervoelen

Once I got home I had to find some more room on my book shelf for the picture books I had purchased and I looked through all the beautiful business cards I had picked at the fair. I went straight to work on some new ideas while they were still fresh in my mind, that is why it took me so long to write these highlights. I hope I can show you some new sketches soon - for now I leave you with this colourful selection of business cards I collected.

It was very nice to meet so many of you in person and I hope we get a chance to meet again in 2026!