Final Piece #1 (Discarded)

For my first final piece, which will take up page one of six, I have sketched a spider using inspiration from 1950's illustration. I have tried to keep to a strict colour palette, using only 'pastel' like colours. For this illustration I used various coloured pencils, with a black fineliner pen.

I created the spider illustration by initially sketching out the letter 'M', and then lightly sketched the spider's shapes around this. After being happy with my lineart, I added a much more refined, and permanent lineart, using a 'heavy' pencil.

The idea behind using a spider in shape of 'm', was that if I was to include text in the illustration, I wanted the spider to be saying "mmmmmmmm", while peering toward a 'tasty' fly below him. This fly would be a separate drawing, and be located under the spider's body to give the illusion that the Spider is further away. The fly will perhaps be, to the right side.

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Update:
I have decided to discard this as a final piece, due to the illustration's size. In a portrait position, it does not fit in terms of width on the page, and if I were to turn it on its side, it would no longer resemble the letter 'm'. I could crop it down through a tool like photoshop, but doing so would mean the original would not be placed into my book. I feel this will make this particular drawing the 'odd one out' and I would rather avoid this.

Despite scrapping this piece. And leaving it out of my book, I still am really proud of this piece. I love how I used fine liner to go over the coloured pencil background, and create the illusion of hairs. This makes the illustration seem more believable, and more lifelike. The colour scheme sticks to the pastel tone palette, and it resembles the style of 1950s illustration. However, I wish I got the anatomy more correct. The spider only features 6 legs, and is missing 2. Also the back legs do not match he opposite sides, this makes the spider look almost crooked, in a way.



Thomas.

Barbara Firth (Children's Book Illustrator)

Barbara Firth (multi award winning illustrator for the 'little bear' series), was a children's book illustrator, who developed sketches for her clients. She claims on her page, that she has been drawing plants and animals from a very young age. After her education at school, she enrolled herself on an fashion and pattern course, at the London college of fashion. She has worked with Vogue magazine, and here she produced illustrations for such things as step by steps.

Years later, she became a freelance illustrator, and after she began working for the book company, Walker Books, she was able to illustrate in the field she was most interested in, this was natural history. This brought her a lot of joy, and she enjoyed drawing such illustrations as bears.

Her first book, in her series of Big and Little bear books, was called 'Can't You Sleep Little Bear?' and she went to the zoo often for research, sketching the anatomy and movement of live bears, in order to create her images. This type of research is great, for an illustrator to do.

Her form is very much so on the cartoon side, but with some realistic elements in there, and that's why I am including her. Her work is not like some of the cartoon/realistic artists that I researched, however it has its resemblances. It seems to (in my opinion) be exactly between the two genres. There are simple colours and textures, but with a realistic anatomy.

http://www.imagesofdelight.com/view_illustration.php?id=953 < image reference at this link.

The image above is made using watercolours and pencils, and is from the book, 'Well done, Little bear'. and was published in 1999 by Walker Books Ltd.

http://www.imagesofdelight.com/view_illustration.php?id=976 < image reference at this link.

The main reasons as to why I decided to produce research on her, is because she 1) Draws animals,

2) Has produced work for children's books, 3) Uses a cartoon like style, with a hint of realism, 4) Also adopts a 50's like style in her images, which I really like.

I can also tie this research into my professional studies blogposts, as I have been researching the themes of  children's book illustrators.

Sadly, Barbara died early on in 2013.

I will use her as part of my inspiration, for making my book, and it's illustrations. I like the effect of using watercolour paint, so I think I will try doing so. Also, I love her simple, yet interesting minimalist cartoon/realistic style of drawing. I will take some influence from Barbara Firth, for my final illustrations.

Thomas.