Page 12

Yesterday I finished colouring page 12 of the book.

I started off with the characters, referring back to page 1 to ensure I kept the colours of the costumes consistent. For both pages so far I've immediately preferred them once some colour is added and the characters start to stand out:

 Next I coloured in the rest of the image; the scenery, the palace etc. I picked out 5 colours form my palette (I'm using 20 in total across all of the image) to use for the palace, making sure they contrasted with the foliage in the background.

Finally, as with page 1, I made the lines brown instead of black and added some textures in some of the trees:

This page was the most enjoyable to draw the elements for as I really like all of the characters dancing, and these two little snippets of this image are some of my favourites: 

 I also completed the slightly different version of this illustration to use as my contribution to the catalog:

Work in Progress Meeting

 This morning we has a quick Work in Progress meeting to check we were all on track after the break. As always its nice to see what everyone else is doing and to get feedback from tutors. Louise seemed pleased with how my work is looking, and said it was all coming together well (this was the first time she had seen anything put together or coloured). She agreed with the choice of a dark coloured line, but said that the use of textures isn't necessarily needed, although it was difficult to show her that part as I was using my laptop with a small screen. The textures are quite a quick addition to the images, so I will continue to add them for now and then decide later whether or not to keep them.

So this is now the finalised style and palette that I will be using to colour my images (although the foliage will vary throughout the book as the seasons change):

I've also now finished putting together page 12 of the book, where all the characters come together at a ball in the palace:

All of the "good" characters can be seen on this final page (including the birds and butterflies), all in their couples apart from the seven dwarves who are spread across the image. The only new character in this image is the Prince of the Palace who is standing at the bottom of the stairs greeting Cinderella (this is the first time they meet). The characters will all be coloured in the same way that they appear on page 1 (except for Cinderella who has changed her dress), but the foliage will now be bright greens and yellows.

And this is an adjusted version of the image which I'll be colouring slightly differently to the above images and using as my contribution to the Hullabaloo Degree Show Catalog:

I've made a start on colouring these 2 images in and will be continuing with that this afternoon before I start on the other pages tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

The completed page 1

Yesterday I finished colouring in and adding texture to page one of the book (although I'm still deciding between two options with the textures).

This is the image after I had coloured in all of the buildings, trees and characters:

I then added a pale yellow to the grass to make it different to the sky, and edited the line so that its a dark brown rather than solid black:

I much prefer it with the brown line as I think it brightens the whole image up a bit, the black is little too overbearing on the rest of the image.

I then added some texture to a few areas of the image, particularly in the trees and parts of the building (its not very clear in this low-res version of the image, but when the image is at full size the textures are much more visible):

I've also tried adding texture to the entire image including the lines to see how that looked:

The comparison between these two is a little clearer in the close-up below:

(Partial texture on the left, full texture on the right. Again they are more visible in the full res versions)

I'm not sure at the moment which of these styles I prefer, so I'll be trying them both out on some of the other pages and also getting some advice on this at my Work in Progress meeting this morning.

Next I'll be starting to work on the final page of the book, as that image will be the one I use for the course catalog ("Hulabaloo") so I need to get it done more urgently than the other pages.

Screenshots

I'm now back to working after a week off for Easter, and I'm getting straight on with creating the final coloured version of page one, before I move on to the other 11 pages.

Following my tutorial with Jonny I have decided to stick to the one coloured line, which will be dark brown, blue etc. depending on the season on each page. I'll also be adding textures into the image once it is coloured, applying the paint and ink textures that I created a couple of weeks ago to some of the emptier areas of the image.

These are a couple of screenshots of the progress I have made so far:

The line is currently solid black, but I will be adjusting that once the image is completely coloured, and I may also adjust the colours slightly once I see how it all looks together. Its Aumtumn in fairytale land on page one so the colours in the foliage are predominantly orange and yellow.

I'll be spending the rest of today getting this image finalised and deciding on the exact colours I will be using, and then starting to put together the other pages.

Week 14 (in brief)

- Colouring page 1

- The completed page 1

- Work in Progress Meeting

- Page 12 and Hullabaloo
- London Trip
- Piecing together pages 2-5

CV Writing

Something I have needed to do for a few weeks now is work on my Creative CV (as well as being something I'll need after uni, its also a part of the course and needs to be handed in along with this presentation document).

I started off by having a browse around Pinterest looking at some examples of creative CV designs.

The 4 examples below are some of the ones I liked the look of, all of which have quite clean and simple designs and limited colour. They also all use small illustrations or logos to describe the person's interests, contact details etc.

After looking at these examples I made a few sketches of some possible layouts and started drawing out some logos/motifs to use in my design.

This is what I have so far, but I still need to add in some of the little motifs (for the contact details and as bullet points for Work Experience/ Education) and move a few things round a little bit:

I went with a design that is reasonably similar to the layout of my website, with boxes with rounded corners and a very limited colour palette of white and pale brown. I may add in a pop of turquoise with the logos but I'll see how it looks in the brown too as I quite like the simplicity of this.

I also used the same font as on my website (Quicksand) however I'm not keen on the bold version of the font, so I may make some changes there too.

I'm now taking a week off to visit family for Easter and also sell some of my work at a Craft Fair over the weekend, so I'll be posting again in just over a week's time once I've done a bit more work.

Tutorial with Jonny

Today I went into uni for a tutorial with Jonny, as I wanted to discuss the ideas I had for colouring my work before I go away for Easter.

I showed him the examples that I had done earlier this week and we discussed which ones would work best. Jonny liked the different uses of texture in the images, so thats definitely something I will be using in the final work. He also liked the examples where I had used different coloured lines for each element but said that some of the lines were too pale and the darker colours were more successful. So next I will be trying to use different colours in the lines but making them several shades darker than I have been so far (and continuing to use the textures too).

Another suggestion he had was to stick to just the one colour line across the whole image, but change the colour of the line per page along with the seasons. I'll be trying this out as well but I think it might be difficult to use dark colours that suit all of the seasons (e.g. Spring tends to be represented by pastel colours).

We also discussed my portfolio and I showed him what I had put together so far. I think I am now pretty  much settled on which pieces of work I will be using, except for adding in a few pieces from the current project once its finished. That will most likely be one or two double-page spreads from the book, and Jonny also recommended including several of the character illustrations (so far I only have one at the beginning) as they are some my stronger pieces of work.

Colour Experiments

Yesterday I got started on experimenting with ways of colouring my images, and possibly using the textures I made last week.

I've cropped in on areas of the image I made for page one, and experimented with colouring them in Photoshop and Illustrator:

(Left to right, top to bottom)

- In this one I used a limited colour palette of 5 shades of brown, along with a pop of red on a few elements. I also used the textures in this example (the textures are more visible in photoshop than in this lower resolution example), first colouring the textures and then using layer masks to apply them to the image.

- This is the most complicated of the techniques I have tried, applying different colour to line work and not just to the empty spaces in between. This technique is very time consuming but I do quite like the result as having al the line in one black or brown can make the image a bit too dark. I'm not too keen on this specific colour scheme (I think its a little too bright for the subject matter), but I think the technique would work if I applied one of the other palettes to it. I'd also like to try adding the textures to this to see how that looks.

- In this one I used very limited colour, just 4 colours applied to only certain areas of the image. This is useful for accentuating certain elements of the image, but I'm not too keen on it overall as I think the full colour is more effective, especially as this is intended for children.

- This is my favourite of the techniques at this stage, I coloured it in Adobe Illustrator so the effect is much neater and smoother. I think the colours here are the most effective, as there are enough colours to make each element stand out on its own, without being too much.

Ideally I would like to try and combine the techniques used in examples 1, 2 and 4. The textures in example 1, the coloured lines in example 2 and a colour palette similar to that in example 4.

I will be trying this today and continuing to experiment with alternative techniques during the week.

Week 12 (in brief)

- Experimenting with colouring techniques and textures

- Tutorial with Jonny about colouring ideas and my portfolio

- Writing a Creative CV

Page One

I mentioned in an earlier post this week that I would be putting together a page from the book in order to start experimenting with colour. So yesterday I created this image for page one:

All of the characters appear on the page, each engaging in their own activity which will develop throughout all the pages. I've added in a few extra details such as the bird on a hedge in the foreground overlooking the rest of the characters. This bird will turn out to be the fairy godmother who helps cinderella. In fact all 3 of the birds in the image are there to help out various characters in the book (birds are a recurring theme in fairytales, often representing salvation).

Its difficult to see in this image as this is much smaller than the final print-out will be, but there is a witch hiding behind the tree house watching Hansel and Gretel, and the wolf is following Little Red Riding Hood. There's also a "shy" dwarf hiding behind a hedge on the far right and side. The apples that Little Red Riding Hood are those that will later be poisoned by the witch and used to try and kill Snow White. There is a painting of some apples up in Rapunzel's tower (apples are another recurring theme in fairytales and a key connection between the characters in my book), and Snow White's reflection can be seen in the Queen's mirror in the castle. I've also included several love heart motifs throughout the image, such as in tree markings and on one of the dwarfs' tops.

There's quite a lot more symbolism and other details in the other pages of the book that will become more apparent as the story develops, and everything will also be much clearer once colour is added.

I've now started to create some textures which I will use to experiment with colour in this image. I want to try out quite a wide variety of colouring techniques before I move on to complete the rest of the images.

I'll be scanning these textures in and applying colour before using them on the image.

Finding Inspiration

This week's Finding Inspiration post is focusing on the use of colour palettes in illustration, and helping me to get some ideas on what sort of palette I may want to use in my work.

1. Zodiac Dance Party by Kelsey Riley

The slightly muted colours in this one would compliment the idea of traditional fairytales, as its not too modern or bold.

2. Dublin Houses by Isabel Feeney

This one is really bright and colourful which is great for children. For a palette like this I would restrict myself to about 10 colours to avoid going too far and over doing it.

3. Red Riding Hood by Yelena Bryksenkova

4. Hansel & Gretel by Emma Block

Both of these images use a very muted colour palette with the addition of a bold red to pick out certain elements. Red is a recurring theme in several of the fairytales (Red Riding Hood's cape. Snow White's apple etc.) so it is well suited to my illustrations, however its also quite common and I think I might like to try something different like the more colourful palettes in the examples above.

Finishing the characters

The last few days have been spent solidly working on finishing the final character illustrations in the book (of which there are over 200 in total).

I've have a few changes to make and may need to re-do a couple of them when I put everything together, but other than that they are all finished:

I'm pleased with how these have gone and I think I'm at the stage now where I can start to put everything together. I'm planning on completing one of the double pages from somewhere in the middle of the book, and using that to experiment with colours and textures before moving on to creating the rest of them. 

Week 11 (in brief)

- Working hard on finishing the character illustrations

- Starting to put everything together: Page One

- Finding inspiration

The characters

Now that all the scenery is pretty much completed (I'll have a few more things to add in once I start putting everything together), its time to start drawing the characters.

This is going to be a pretty long part of the project, as I have quite a lot of characters in my book, and there are 12 images of each one. 

I made a start on this yesterday and so far I've completed the illustrations of Hansel & Gretel, Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, the Witch and the Woodsman (although a few of them need a bit of tweaking in photoshop).

Despite how long they're taking me, I am quite pleased with how they're looking, particularly the illustration of Hansel & Gretel riding on the Swan's back, and its great to finally start to see the stories coming to life.

I'm expecting this part of the project to take me a week to complete, so I'll be working on this between now and next weekend, with the aim of getting it all done by Saturday so that the following week I can start putting everything together.

The other houses

Today has been a day of drawing, trying to get all of the houses and other scenery finished.

Firstly I did the gingerbread house and the 7 dwarves cottage, each from 2 angles and with cross-sections (the cross-sections aren't pictured here):

I also did a few small illustrations of lamp posts, bridges and wishing wells that will be scattered around the scene:

I also illustrated the palace today, one large detailed image with part of the building as a cross-section (for the last scene of the book where all the characters come together for a ball), and one much smaller simplified version that will be on the mountain tops in the background of the main images.

These illustrations are a bit large for my scanner so I'll be photographing them tomorrow before my assessment.

Depending on what advice I am given in the assessment tomorrow I will probably be starting to illustrate all of the characters on friday and carrying on with that over the weekend. If this all goes to plan then I am now 2 days ahead of the little plan I made myself earlier in the week, which is looking good for helping me get everything done in time.

Tutorial with Louise

This morning I went into uni for a tutorial with my personal tutor, Louise.

I hadn't seen Louise since week 3 of the project so I had quite a lot to show and explain to her.

Overall it went well and she seemed pleased with everything I've done. I've had a bit of difficulty in my last couple of tutorials in trying to explain exactly what it is I'm doing (in the sense that every character will be on each page, and you can re-read the book again and again for each individual character) and how the final thing might look. So the evening before my tutorial I quickly started to put together a few of the elements I've been drawing into a rough scene (without characters as I don't have any illustrations in the correct size or format yet for that). I gave it a bit of colour just to show how it might look, but the colours I've used will not be the final ones, and the whole image will be coloured whereas here I only had time to colour the background:

I think this helped me to explain to Louise how the final images might look and how it will all be laid out etc.

These were her suggestions:

- The trees along the back are all quite similar in size so try to break it up with maybe one or two large trees.

-There is quite a straight line along the bottom of the castle which doesn't help to make it seem part of the scene (it seems more like its been stuck on) maybe add some leaves or flowers growing from the ground and up the walls to help blend it in a bit.

- Definitely try using the textures we have discussed previously. Especially watercolour and drop colour textures laid over the digital colour.

- Perhaps think about one or several of the images being laid out as though you are looking at the scene through some trees (i.e. frame the scene in some of the images).

I have already started to draw some flowers and other foliage to add to the walls of the castle (which will vary between seasons) so that is something I can quite easily improve. I will be experimenting with textures and colours in a couple of weeks once I have completed all of the drawings, and I really like the idea of watercolour textures.

The last suggestion is the most difficult one as it may restrict how much I can fit into the scene, but it is definitely something I will be trying when it comes to piecing together all of the final images.

I'll be seeing Louise again on Thursday with Jonny for my formative assessment, so I should get even more feedback then. For now I am going to be sticking to my timetable and drawing the rest of the houses and cross-sections.

New Timetable

Seeing as we've now passed the half way point of this project, I though it would be a good idea to reassess my timetable for the next 8 weeks.

Here's the new plan:

I'm going to need to stick to this timetable pretty strictly as its going to be a bit tight to get everything done in time (especially if I get my book printed and bound elsewhere as I'll need to get the files sent off as promptly as possible).

As it says above, this week's main task is to get on with (and hopefully finish) drawing all of the necessary houses, which I'll be doing in between going to my tutorial and my formative assessment as well as a talk on friday morning.