Inky Experiments

A few experiments with watered down ink. With watercolour I’d been using the paint to “colour in” my drawings, but I wanted to try using ink/paint to actually draw and make marks, so i started out “drawing” with black ink watered down to various shades. Now I think I’ve got the hang of it i want to try using different colours (or even just watered down tones of one colour)

I tried to use lots of different brush marks to get various effects, such as fanning out the bristles (incredibly bad for my paintbrush, but was effective!).

Experiments with Watercolour

Using my observational sketches, I tried out painting a few of them by layering flat washes of watercolour paint on normal sketchbook paper.

The layers of paint were to experiment with tones, and attempting to get a really rich and intense colour. I then tried adding details with various things, such as fineliner and crayon to see how this looked. The colour was painted on roughly, then outlines and details afterwards to define the image. I wanted to keep my drawings soft and friendly looking to appeal to children, and I wanted to focus on getting a general feel for the animal rather than getting it completely realistic and accurate. 
I found that colour really helped to bring the sketches to life, 

I also tried out some experiments with mark making. I often use washes of watercolour in my sketchbook, this is something I am quite comfortable doing and worked really well to paint the soft and fluffy fur of the rabbits, but it didn't really portray other textures. For the hedgehog I needed to show the difference in texture for its spikes. I used a rough wash of paint for the base in the same way as the other paintings, but rather than working up layers of paint like normal I decided to get a smaller, flat paintbrush and "dot" on the page where the hedgehog's spikes were.

I really like the randomness of the marks, and contrast between the hedgehog's face and body. I think this technique effectively shows the textures.

 

Observational Drawing

As a starting point of this project I have been drawing various animals that children are generally familiar with, and will therefore recognise. Rough pencil drawings have helped me to concentrate on proportions and defining features of the animals. 

Once I have drawn a variety of the more common animals, I plan to experiment with more exotic creatures that children perhaps know very little about, which may help my work stand out from the huge selection of children’s illustration available, however it may also mean that children do not particularly respond to my work. After experimenting I can better decide which types of animals to use in my work.

Project Proposal

For my FMP, I’m going to look into Illustrating a book for children.
In my Authorship 2 project last year I started an idea for a children’s book about the bizarre things children dream of being when they grow up. I want to continue this work this year, but I also want to look into illustrating narratives, including ones involving anthropomorphism.
My project from last year had looked at the strange things children imagine themselves being, but I hadn't looked at ways of turning this into a book format or a narrative, so this would be something I would be interested in looking at. 

I want to make a picture book aimed at children between the ages of about 3 and 6. At this stage the focus of the book is very much on the images. I need to make my book interesting enough to entertain both children and parents, as it is the parents who will be buying the book and reading it to their children.

I want to look into anthropomorphism to start with. Children have always been fascinated by animals, hence the great number of books and films where animals are personified and made into the main characters. I have made basic wordless narratives using animals as characters, but I have never written a whole story including them so I think that I would like to experiment with this.

I want to experiment with new techniques in this project, however I do want to particularly focus on paint and collage as I have worked with these before and like the textures and bright colours you can achieve with them. 

I would like to try combining painting and collage, as although I have successfully used both techniques individually I am interested to see how the two materials would work together. 

To start with I will look at drawing a range of animals, and then look at which are most effective. Once I have done this I will look into turning some of these into characters, and from these drawings I can then start to write a short narrative.

I will also start to look at books already on the market, and the techniques other children's illustrators have used in the past and are currently using.

This blog will track my progress throughout this project.