The Rob Roy Drawings

In February 2020, June Carey was invited by The Folio Society Ltd. to create 10 pastel drawings to illustrate a limited edition of Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy.  

Artist Statement

To enable me to create the drawings to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s “Rob Roy” I began by reading his book on this renowned Scottish character, Rob Roy MacGregor. During my research into the history of Rob Roy, I discovered that there is very little known about him and very little artefacts to verify his existence. To this day, Rob Roy is remembered as either a Scottish Hero or a Cattle Stealing Rogue.

I also purchased the audible version of the book which I listened to every day from morning till night whilst working on the drawings. This allowed me to completely absorb myself in the story, which I absolutely loved and found that it helped enormously in creating the images. When I read a book, I always wonder what the characters look like, so being able to bring the characters to life visually in drawings, was a wonderful way to express what I had absorbed “listening” to Sir Walter Scott’s wonderful book on “Rob Roy”. I highly recommend it. The human figure is central to my work, however their ‘clothing’ normally takes the form of tattoos on the body. Having to ‘clothe’ my figures for this book was initially a bit of a challenge. I adjusted very quickly to this new way of working and will probably find some sort of ‘clothing’ may very well begin to appear in my new work.’