Illustration for Children's Book Project

This Module was one that I was really excited about working on as this a field which I aspire to work in .

I did a lot of experiments with colour palettes , where I tried to determine which colours worked well together, which ones conveyed a particular moor or atmosphere when combined and did some symbolise a particular emotion.   this is one of my experiments where I painted with varying degrees of the same colour to understand how the tone and colour  could change the mood of my images .

We also experimented with Layout and Typography , where we would look into how you can marry text and image and how you can place them either for or against each other to help generate a particular mood or look to the page .

This image is one  from a three week project we had where we had to experiment with layout and typography . For this image I had several ideas for the text planned and went with the idea of scratching the text into the tree and added the woodpecker later to give the impression that the bird had carved the text into the wood with its beak.

For this module I wanted to refine my skills in certain areas which I find challenging , these were:

- drawing children

-hair and texture ( something I always strive to work on as I enjoy drawing them)

- size and proportions ( a lot of my work features tall and lean characters and I wanted to explore other ways of drawing figures)

- working on photoshop

My story was focused around a little girl , who's Aunt is a protector/ liaison for magical creatures that live in a nearby forest, a group of the beings her Aunt is friendly with is a company of Dwarves who live in an underground kingdom and who venture above ground to gather supplies. The little girl and her Aunt help the Dwarves with this and the little girl becomes friends with them , seeing that they are different from the ones she has read about in fairy tales.

This is some observational work I did for this project :

exploring  the size ratio of a little girl to an adult

Over the course of the project I had several pages of drawings exploring the facial hair and general hairstyles for the dwarves 

For my final coloured images I experimented with a range of different media , using Copic Markers and Watercolours ( my usual mediums) as well as using Ink ( A medium that I used quite a bit in the past, but for this project I explored how you can make texture with ink) and by using Photoshop I was able to edit and colour my images to a satisfactory quality.





I found that by writing my own story and create and design my own characters that It gave me a great creative freedom and a good way to develop my skills of character building . In particular , I was very happy with how the Dwarves turned out , by researching into the mythology and literature surrounding them ( something which I really enjoy doing ) I was able to create a wonderful group of Dwarves for my Children's book .



For the Dwarves in particular, I went into quite a bit of detail into the colour palettes and textures used , as each dwarf had a specific personality and therefore had a colour scheme and unique patterns for their clothing, I wanted to give the impression that some of the Dwarves were related and so for some I used a specific set of colours to represent a family colour scheme and then developed this by also combining some of the patterns onto some of the dwarves belts and hats , for example Loni, his hat and belt have his brothers Vit and Vig's pattern as well as his own unique pattern to show the reader that he is the eldest as he has the combined patterns in his clothing .
Overall I was really happy with the dwarves colour scheme and its gives them an earthy quality with the amount of greens, browns and greys used , they also compliment each other really well to make a pleasing lineup layout when on  the page.



overall I feel that my experiments and final images for this project were a success, as I was able to explore the areas that I have difficulty with and work on them which helped my own personal practice. I enjoyed working with the media for these images and I feel much more confident with photoshop, broadening my skills with this  program  to the stage where I enjoy working with it now rather than dreading working with it .
I feel that my character development was really good for this project and enjoyed this aspect of the process immensely and
this is  an area of my work that I want to develop even further .