Martin Aitchison
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martin Aitchison (born 1919) was an illustrator for the Eagle comic from 1952 to 1963, and then one the main illustrators for Ladybird Books from 1963 to1990.
Aitchison was born in Birmingham. He was educated at Ellesmere College in Shropshire, leaving aged 15 to attend the Birmingham School of Art and then then Slade School of Art. He married fellow art student Dorothy Self.
He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1939. He was deaf, excluding him from active service in the Second World War, but he worked for Vickers Aircraft as a technical illustrator. He produced drawings for the bouncing bomb designed by Barnes Wallis for the Dam Busters air raid.
He became a freelance commercial artist after the war, producing drawings for a range of magazines. He began to work for the Eagle in 1952, drawing adventure comic strips, including Luck of the Legion. He also drew for Swift, another comic. His work for comics displayed his talents in an exhuberant and creative medium, working mainly from imagination.
He joined Ladybird Books in 1963, and joined Harry Wingfield in illustrating many titles in its new Key Words Reading Scheme books, also known as Peter and Jane, which were used to teach so many British children to read. The consistency, naturalistic style and attention to detail of the artist made him a favourite with the prolific British publisher and over a period of a quarter of a century, he illustrated at least 100 different titles. Martin Aitchison was not the only artist to make the switch from The Eagle to Ladybird: Frank Hampson and Frank Humphris also followed the same path.
He left Ladybird in 1987, and retired.
