final piece part 3

This is the last piece  in my set of 3 for the exhibition. As I mentioned below, it is one of the final scenes in the book where the evil wizard is turned into an old man and encased in a bubble.

final piece number 2

This is the second illustration for my final piece, this time my scanner seems to have behaved itself. This is from another key scene in the book.

bubbles

This is the third image for my final piece, a key point at the end of the story where the evil wizard "Bardel" gets turned into an old man and put in a bubble which floats high into the sky, whilst the prince and princess are getting married. To be honest I think the image below could be better as it is hard to distinguish the wedding without reading the story, but this piece would accompany the book anyway.

eagles and stuff

This is the second image which I shall be filling with watercolours. It shows "Wendy" the unicorn and "Silas" the wizard casting magic on the evil wizard "Bardel" who is currently in the form of an eagle, who is chasing their ship.

unicorns

This is the first of the illustrations I am doing for my final piece, which shall be a set of three key points taken from the story. I have decided that fewer colourful illustrations would be preferable to more black and white ones, as my research shows this is more common in children's books. Children find coloured images preferable (I put this question to my friend's sister and brother and received a definite answer), and I also believe that they would be more interesting aesthetically for my final piece. A set of watercolour images would also be easier to recognise as children's illustration in an exhibition.

When I scanned in the image, I found that it distorted the colours somewhat. Below is the original scanned image; the light tones of pink and orangey reds seem to have completely disappeared.

I altered the colours on Photoshop a little to try to get the image as close to the real thing as possible. The image below shows this.
Whilst messing with this, I increased the blue tones to end with the image below. I actually find this image preferable to my original painting as I think it is somewhat more mysterious and depicts the 'blue light' from which the unicorn appears far better. It also makes the light seem to reflect off of the trees in the background.
If it was possible to submit the images for printing digitally, I think I would choose the bottom image.

final piece

I wish! This is the ink outline of the image which I shall fill using watercolours. I got slightly distracted and started drawing a brain and found that it fitted perfectly above the ray of light..

toucan/birdy

After completely going through the first part of the story, I learnt that Wendy the unicorn can change forms at her will, and for most of the story takes the form of a "toucan like bird but with a smaller beak". So, here's a toucan with a smaller beak.

I will be moving on to colour next.

zines and nice things

I have been searching for types of illustrations for different purposes to see how the styles vary between topic, and have taken a liking to zines and zine culture. Over the summer I am going to make my own simple zine using pens, pencils and a photocopier. After experimenting with Quark at the start of the year, I have decided that it is far too complicated for little projects where overall quality is not immensely important. I might even use publisher.

I have found several websites which concentrate on zine culture, the first being wemakezines which is a networking site similar to facebook or myspace but purely for people interested in making zines. They even stress how they are not interested in people's social lives or interests, and simply want to use the site to compare, swap and take ideas for zines. They also arrange events, including a zine making day for 13 - 19 year olds which took place in September last year at Leeds library.

I also found this blog which I believe could be useful for publishing etc.

famous children's illustrators

I have been looking through some of my favourite children's books to gain inspiration for my project. The books which stand out as my favourites from when I was young are those by Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss and Beatrix Potter, especially as I'm from the Lake District where Potter lived and used to visit the "Beatrix Potter Attraction" in Bowness-upon-Windermere quite often as a child. These books are all beautifully illustrated and really brought the stories to life.

The Big Friendly Giant from Roald Dahl's "BFG" above, and "George's Marvellous Medicine" below.

The "Cat In The Hat" and some of the characters from the book below.

"The Fox In Socks" below.

brian chippendale

This is from a book by Brian Chippendale, who was part of something similar to ‘Tacheles’ (an art collective in Berlin, situated in an old building with separate studio spaces which is also free for the public to look around) but in America called ‘Fort Thunder’ which was a collective of artists and musicians as he is also a member of the band "Lightning Bolt".

This is the front cover from his book "Ninja".

Chippendales work is mostly in black and white, only using colour for the covers.

ivor cutler

Ivor Cutler was a Scottish poet, humorist and  songwriter who was born in 1923 and died recently in 2006. He was featured on many radio shows as well as live performances of his poetry, some of which solo and some including backing accompaniments. Cutler also published several books of his work, including illustrations of some of the characters in his poetry, the ones below being part of his unpublished bestiary circa 1966-71, created right on the eve of his first published book.

I find Cutler's style of illustration charming, as despite looking very childish, they are obviously very well thought out. As well as their accompanying poetry they are quite bizarre.

unicorn

I am practicing drawing unicorns as it is one of the main characters in the story. I found a picture of a horse and stuck a horn on it. The drawing looked ok on paper, but after scanning it it looks shit. This has annoyed me very much.

scrawls

Scribbles. That's about it.

old drawings/sketchbook

I've decided that I am no longer going to use a sketchbook to present my work for this project, as I have come across the main problem which slowed me down in the past. I find it extremely different to start new pages as I am quite a perfectionist and spend far to long trying to make them look pretty and keep the pages running by using fancy backgrounds etc. This is taking me far too much time, and is stopping me from getting on with sketching and practicing drawing, as well as research. Instead, I shall continue to draw in my sketchbook but I shall scan them in and present them on my blog as it is much quicker.

Whilst looking for a blank page in one of my old doodling sketchbooks I came across a page full of scribbles which I had done before I started college and actually enjoyed doing my own strange work. I have cropped this page as it is not completely finished and this is possibly my favourite part.

toastycats

I recently spent a week up in Glasgow, in which I visited a couple of exhibitions at the Glasgow School of Art and also at the CCA. I shall explain about the exhibition at the CCA in a later post. 

In the small bookshop in the gallery, I found the first and second issues of a small zine called "Toastycats". Each one has 20 pages and is printed on thin paper, A5 in size. I bought the second issue as there was two of these and James bought the only first one. As with Fufurious, it is only the cover which is printed in colour, with the illustrations inside in black and white.

I really like this zine as Magda Boreysza, the author, has used many different styles of illustration which I find very inspirational. Over the summer I think I will try my hand at making a couple of zines, especially as I find it easier to draw when I don't have a deadline or a set topic.
Most of the illustrations are very cartoon like, except the story in the last few pages which is more realistic. I really like the style and shall apply a similar one to some drawings for Roy's book to see what they turn out like. Obviously they wont be as good as these.

kaugummi books

Whilst randomly searching on Google for he word kaugummi, I discovered an company who distribute books and zines made by multiple authors. As at the moment I am researching different styles of drawing I found this site extremely useful. Below is an image from the first issue of the Kaugummi collective drawing magazine, it particularly attracted my interest with the image on the right. An interesting concept which could be quite gruesome is drawn in a very childlike manner.

There is a link to the main page of the website here.

fufurious

In The Easter holidays, I spent a week in Berlin with friends to see the sights, go out in the evenings, and look at architecture and art galleries. Just out of the city centre we found a small French book shop, in which I found this small comic called Fufurious. It is aimed at on older audience as the main plot follows a bear "Grisou" and his heroin addiction. It also features the Beatles and Betty Boop ("Botty Glup") in a slightly twisted and almost unrecognisable form.

I bought this because I like the carefree style of illustration as well as the plot line, stuck inside the front cover there is also a colourful print of Betty Boop and Grisou which is very appealing. Below is the back cover showing the characters of the book, this is the only part in colour as the inside is all black and white.
Below is an example of what the inside looks like. Unfortunately opened out the magazine is about 2 cm too large for my scanner so a tiny part is cut off around the edges. The style is very rough and uses two thicknesses of line to define some of the characters from the background. I love the handwriting as it is very gracefully done, but saying that I love the French style of handwriting anyway.

ink

Even though I am ridiculously poor at the moment, I spent the last of my money on a pen and ink to try out a new style of illustration. These are just me messing around, and I am currently practicing drawing unicorns as I realised I'm not very good at drawing horsey creatures. Just some dinosaurs which came out of some scribbles, they are joined together like those little people you cut out of paper that hold hands.