This week we started to work out what we are going to do for our final piece (a double page spread). I enjoyed creating the storyboards so much that I’ve decided to do a comic book style spread. I like to draw small so putting lots of images on one page makes a lot more sense to me than making one big picture. I started working on the style this week. Now I have to think about layout.

This book, Making Comics is my new bible, it’s awesome. I might write a proper review of it. It had amazing reviews on Amazon and now I know why!

Last night we did a storyboard of the text we had chosen to illustrate. I focused on the first two chapters of Alice in Wonderland. I’m basing my Alice on Alice Liddell, the ‘original Alice’. I had a lot of fun doing this and now I want to do the whole book!

If you click on the image you can view a larger version :)

In illustration class this week we’re developing our characters for the final piece we’re doing. I had chosen Alice in Wonderland because I thought it would be easy. It turns out that there really isn’t a description of Alice’s appearance in the book. The traditional image we have of Alice is probably just based on some of the most illustration such as those by John Tenniel and then the 1951 Disney Film.

Without a description in the book I have two options; to use the blonde haired, blue dress wearing girl that we all associate with Alice or to go off and do totally my own thing. I’m stuck, I can’t decide. I like the idea of total freedom but that scares me as I’m not sure I can pull someone out of my imagination like that.

For now I’m focussing on different ways of drawing girls and seeing what happens from there. I’m trying not to get in a grump because I can’t get what’s in my head onto paper.

Normally today I would be blogging about my illustration class but my teacher is ill so we didn’t have class last night.

I thought I’d share some of my sketchbook work instead. We are working towards a final piece of work and had to choose a story (or write one) to illustrate. I chose Alice in Wonderland.

I think I’m going to focus on the scenes with the Cheshire Cat.

I love seeing the work of others, they’re all so different!

My biggest challenge will be drawing Alice, I’m not confident drawing people. It will be a good challenge though. I like to push myself to do new things.

I struggled this week, I mean really struggled. Not with the drawing but the ideas process. I love to draw but I don’t always know what to draw. That’s why I only really do silly simple pictures. I can’t invent stories.

We were given two pictures and had to create a story board with 6-8 frames to get from one image to the other. I stared at the pictures, my mind was blank. Everyone else was busy drawing away, their pages filled with ideas. My page was blank. I kept staring in the hope that something magical would spring into my mind but it didn’t. The two images has been paired together because they both had similar colours and tones; I can see that but I couldn’t see how to get from one to another. I have to admit to feeling utterly defeated.

Eventually, with lots of help and coaxing from my teacher we (I say ‘we’ it was more her) came up with the idea of the tiger being in the freeze that goes around the building and he could escape from it.

I don’t deal with difficulty well but I’m glad I didn’t give up. I did manage to create a story (albeit with a *lot* of help). I enjoyed the drawing part once I knew what I was doing. It’s just a sketchy storyboard. I might illustrate it properly one day now I’m not in such a grump about the whole thing!

What I’ve learnt is that I really need to let go of the idea that I have to be good at everything. No one is good at everything. We all have things that we struggle with, it’s part of being human.

This week we looked at storyboarding and character development. I ended up with lots of pencil scribbles that don’t make much sense. I end up scrawling ideas all over the page, most of which only mean anything to me. I might develop the ideas further when I get a chance.

We used Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes as inspiration – Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

This week we looked at environment and creating scenes for our characters. It was so fun playing with collage – it’s a great way to work because you can move everything around to get the perfect picture. It felt like being a kid again! Mine didn’t fit in the scanner so the cat and mouse got a little bit chopped off.

This week we started to look at character design. Rather than try it with people we started with animals. I chose penguins :D

Here’s the real penguin pictures I started with

and here are the sketches I did.

It was great fun, it makes me want to start drawing other animals as well as cats :D

This week we worked with dip pens and Indian ink. It’s something I’d never used before and I love to learn new things so I had a lot of fun (and made a mess :D)

It is so different to using normal pens. It is much wetter and so much blacker. Even the most black of my drawing pens don’t get such intense results. Making marks is really different too, it’s scratchy and lacks some of the smoothness that I’m used to with my drawing pens.

Once we’d got the hang of the pens, our teacher encouraged us to copy a picture, and try to work out how all the marks were made as well as experimenting with ink washes. I chose a picture from Ronald Searle’s Big Fat Cat Book

I’m pretty pleased with my results (if you ignore the giant splodge on the scales!)

What I’m struggling most with is that I can’t get smooth lines. The combination of my shaky hands and the scratchy nib means that all my work looks really messy. I want to get it to work though, the blackness makes scanning so easy, there’s depth that I just can’t achieve with other pens. I will keep at it and maybe share some more of my results in the future.

Have you drawn with dip pens?

It was my second illustration class on Tuesday night. I would have blogged sooner but the rain destroyed what I had done on the way home so I had to re-do it all!

We looked at colour this week, using gouache paints. I had used gouache once before and hated them but this time round I think I like them a little more. I think I could get used to them.

After using Photoshop to do so much of my colour work it was fun to get messy and use paints, mixing up different colours. First we made a simple colour wheel and then went on to add white and black to create different shades of colour.

I found some cool templates so if you want to have a go yourself they’re here and here