Friday, March 4, 2011

"The Water Babies" Illustrations

My five finished illustrations for Rev. Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies"









Development:
This is the first draft of the scene where Tom meets the King of the Dragonflies. After looking through "The Wave", NY times book review here, I saw how using drippy, bleeding watercolors could help imply a water setting and overall "wet" tone in an illustration. I experimented with liquid watercolor mask from my favorite Seattle art store, The Artist and Craftsman, to seal the figures. I then splattered gouache paint over the top. I do kind of like this affect above, but it wasn't what I was looking for - too distracting! 

This is the second draft I did, and nearly stuck with, but I found the frog legs to be too "Disney" for my taste. The Disney book version is what I grew up with and love, but I wanted to do something of my own.

I finally choose the red octopus boy on the right because the red/orange popped well against the blue (to more easily direct attention to the main character) and because I felt the tentacles reflect more of the writing's slightly creepy feel.

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