Final amends

Before I move on to new images, here is the amended version of the daffodil image - with the small purple-ish mound of earth to root the daffodils into the picture (rather than leaving them floating) and the head shape made more purple with photoshop. The only thing to add (if necessary) is the stars around the purple head.

Newly amended image

Right then, the 'Yellow Drink' image is re-drawn. I am much more pleased with it than the original drawing, a little bit of effort goes a long way.

Original:

New:

Much more realistic and delicate.

And the finished image, photographed on the lightbox, with cut out lettering, sized, lightened and purple added in...

Unfortunately, this technique looses a lot of the original detail, but at least an atmospheric feel is created. Adding in the purple and stars still needs a bit of work - trying to add in the fantastical element without it looking a little too odd.

Yellow drink image

Before I move onto new images, I am going through to make amendments to the current ones, so that I am a bit happier with them. (Hence the playing around with purples).

I've begun to re-draw the "yellow drink" image, as the girl's face was pretty hideous...

And there were a number of problems with the drawing. Instead, I've used an old photo of my sister, flipped around, to create a more realistic image...

Although it is frowned upon to work from photos, I don't have a huge amount of contact with children to use as models, and I actually quite like my personal attachment to these photos of my and my sister's childhood - they hopefully add a sense of nostalgia and depth (at least, to me they do!)

One of the problems I have at the moment is that, going straight into the illustrating, I didn't think about the character's in the images. As I wanted an ambiguous, poetic feeling, I don't have an exact back story to the book, and so haven't created a central character, so the children (all girls) in the images are all quite different, which will probably cause further confusion for the reader. So, I've made the decision to try to use photos of my sister as much as possible throughout the book - to try to add to the continuity.

Anyway, I'm currently much more pleased with the re-drawing, which I think has more sensitivity to the scene...

I still need to add the colour (in this instance using pencil crayons), but I do like the simplicity of the pencil lines and simple tones of light through the paper. I have ideas to concentrate (after this first project) to create more adult illustrations with more muted tones, perhaps to illustrate poetry, going back to some of the first images I made such as this one:

Swing image

And after a little bit more playing, here is the "purple enhanced" swing image...

More photoshop experiments

Managed to pick up the photoshop-brush today - finally. Just a quick bit of playing around to the sand image, using the yellow-er original image and adding my chosen purple using different sized and different levels of transparency brushes to try to make the purple areas stand out as much as possible and link with the other pages.

Anyway, here is the finished result...

I'm still not convinced about it - and I really need to see how all of these images look once printed, as on screen and print vary to such a degree, especially with these photographic and digitally manipulated images.

New Purple

Things are getting off to a sloooow re-start. But to begin, I am trying to solve the "purple" problem. That is, am trying to get some consistency with the purple in each image, and making it stand out within the illustrations. So using photoshop, I've selected the correct area, and painted over with a selected purple, keeping a degree of transparency so that the textures and luminosity of the images is retained.

As you can see in these exciting before and after shots!

Before...

And after...

Before...

And after...

It may not seem to make a huge amount of difference, but I am hoping it now looks more purple, and if added to all the images - may add a degree of continuity and flow between the pages, fingers crossed!

Continuity problems...

Two posts in one day!!

I also want to document my concerns (from an illustrative book point of view) confirmed from a recent group criticism by the Picture Club (a group of illustrators I am part of).

Most importantly the lack of continuity between the images. As you can see from the current double page spreads...

Although I am relatively happy with each image individually (although all need tweaking/re-drawing, etc.) there are too many differences between the images in terms of:

- different lettering

- use of different media

- the point of view of the images

- the characters within the images

- the colours - especially the yellows and purple.

I had a decent conversation about this within the group criticism, one of the problems with my way of working is that is is so definite. Once the paper has been cut, there is little room to make amendments to an image, you can't rub it out. Therefore, one of the changes I hope to make is my way of working, to build up layers using photoshop, so that I can play with the finished image so much easier. So I need to polish up my adobe skills! I am concerned that this will give too much of a "digital" feel to the illustrations, but we will have to see. Also, one of the most important things within the images is the use of yellow and purple, although I want there to be a variety of yellows, to symbolise different emotions and memories: fear, sickness, loneliness, triumph, hope, happiness, the purple, I want and need as a constant. The purple symbolises the missing person, and needs to be obvious enough so that the reader eventually realises it, so I may need to depend on trusty photoshop to provide one definite purple colour, rather than the red/blue-y variants I currently have in the images. So, lots to be done!