Freelance illustrator – Greece
Illustrator freelancer Iris Samartzi was born in Athens, Greece. She studied at the Vakalo Art and Design College, where she obtained her two Bachelor degrees, in Graphic Design and Interior Design. She also attended seminars on Children’s Art and Drama in Education. It was back in 2004 when she discovered that Illustration is her dream job and started showing her work to publishers. “...If you want to be an illustrator, first you have to be a director, a scenographer, a graphic designer, a photographer, an interior designer, a costume designer...and last but not least a painter. I could add more occupations, such as historian, explorer, engineer, physicist and more. Of course, I am none of those things but, to me, illustration is constant research in oh-so-many fields...” Fifteen years later, she has illustrated more than 80 books and some of them have been translated into other languages (Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Basque, French, English, Chinese, Korean, Turkish). She loves her work and she is always looking for ideas, new projects, and new techniques to explore; her work has received domestic and international acclaim and has won her a number of prestigious awards including the following: IX Compostela Prize 2016 for picturebooks?for the book “Una ultima carta” by A. Papatheodoulou (Kalandraka Editorial); IBBY Greece Illustrated Book Award 2017 for the book “Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer...” by A. Pipini (Patakis Publishers); Greek State Picturebook Award and IBBY Greece Illustrated book Award 2016 for the book “The Magic World of Federico” by S. Trivizas (Diaplasi Books); Greek State Picturebook Award and IBBY Greece Illustrated Book Award 2012?for the book “The Good and the Bad Pirates” by A. Papatheodoulou (Papadopoulos Publishing); IBBY Greece Illustrated book Award 2015 and IBBY Honor List for the book “Badboy” by A. Darlasi (Patakis Publishers); IBBY Honor List 2014?for the book “Odyssey, the Ingenious Story” by M. Angelidou (Vivliofono Books)… and more. Τhroughout all those years she’s been working in nursery and primary schools teaching art, organising art workshops for children, making book presentations, and getting inspired by the children’s creativity. Last year she ran a workshop (“Paper Bag Stories”) at Bologna Children's Book Fair 2019. She was nominated for the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award by the Greek section of IBBY. She’s also been a member of the judging panel of the Greek State Book Awards (2016-2017), Greek IBBY Book Awards (2019). On September 2015, she attended Picturecamp Masterclass with Benji Davies, Chris Haughton, Alexis Deacon, and Jorge Martin in Atapuerca, Spain. Right now she’s been working on a new book for Kalandraka Editorial and a version of Dr.Dolittle (Hugh Lofting) for Papadopoulos Publishing, both written and adapted by A. Papatheodoulou.
More about Iris and her work at www.irissamartzi.com
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