Beatrix Potter Drawing

This is my Beatrix Potter line drawing and colouring process. I used the same technique as I did for all of my other drawings by layering up the colours on photoshop. As there was no real full colour photos I had to do a little bit of guess work with some of the colours. I think that the image worked well considering I had to guess which colours to go with.  

Beatrix Potter research

As I am struggling to find famous woman artists from the past that are appropriate to include in a book for a young person, I decided to branch a little bit into illustration, as it is still relevant and woman illustrators from history played a large part in shaping the future of the art and illustration industry. I also thought that younger people would like to have someone such as Beatrix Potter in this book as they will most likely remember reading her stories from their childhood and they will be able to relate to her and her art.

Born: 28th July 1866, South Kensington London
Died: 22nd December 1943
Movement: Illustration 

• Beatrix and her brother Bertram kept small animals as pets. They had mice, rabbits and even a hedgehog! These were the inspirations for her stories. 
• Beatrix potter is most known for creating her cute illustrated children's books featuring talking animals. Her most famous book is probably The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  
• Nature fascinated Beatrix, Her love of nature was inspired by the yearly trips that she took to the lake district with her family. 
• Before Beatrix potter was took on by a publishing house she privately printed the first edition of her book The Tale Of Peter Rabbit.
• Beatrix was a very smart business woman and she created merchandise to go alongside her books. She created Peter Rabbit dolls, board games and wallpapers along with other things. 
• Beatrix owned a lot of land including sixteen farms and over four hundred achers of land!  when she died she left all of her property to the national trust.  
• Beatrix Potters books are still so popular that on average four of her books are sold every single minute. 
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit has never been out of print since it was first published.

Image Taken from: http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.com/author/beatrix-potter

Georgia O'Keffee Research

Georgia O'Keffee could be known as one of the most significant artists from the 20th century, she is most known for painting large bright beautiful flowers. She was determined to live out her dream of becoming a painter.She achieved her dream and her career spanned for more than 60 years and even her failing eye sight didn't stop her from creating art.  


Born: November 15, 1887 In Wisconsin, United States
Died: March 6, 1986 In Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
Movements: American Modernism

• Georgia O'Keffee lived until she was 98 years old.
• She made over 200 paintings of flowers. 
• as she got older, O'Keffee started to loose her vision so she stopped painting but she continued to make drawings and pottery. 
• She knew that she wanted to be an artist from a very young age and would not stop until she achieved her goal. 
• When she was at school everyone loved her drawings. 
• her painting 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1' Sold for 28 million pounds, making it the highest ever priced painting done by a woman. 
• she loved to paint flowers in a very large scale so that people could appreciate their beauty more. 

Image taken from: http://www.biography.com/people/groups/famous-named-georgia

Leonardo Da Vinci Research

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most well known painters in the world. As well as being a highly talented painter he was extremely clever and first invented a lot of things that we use every day such as helicopters and bicycles.  



Born: April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy
Died: May 2, 1519
Movement: High Renaissance

• Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the best known painters in the world with his legendary works including the Mona Lisa, The Vitruvian Man an the Last Supper.
• Da Vinci wrote in the opposite direction to normal meaning that if you wanted to read it you would need a mirror. 
• He was obsessed with Anatomy of the human body and became an expert by creating hundreds of  drawings of human bodies.
• Da Vinci was not only a painter he was also an inventor, scientist, mathematician, engineer, writer,musician and much more. He was very, very talented.    
• There are a lot of theories surrounding Da Vinci's painting 'Mona Lisa.' for example some people believe that it is actually a self portrait.
• According to face recognition software the Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% Disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry.
• Da Vinci first invented many things such as a parachute, a helicopter, a diving suit, a giant crossbow, the bicycle and many many other things. 
• Leonardo Da Vinci was very tall, his height was 6 foot 4 and a half !

Image taken from: http://galleryhip.com/leonardo-self-portrait-drawing.html

Salvador Dali Activity page

For Salvador dali's activity page I thought it would be fun to create an activity where the reader designs their own crazy moustache for Salvador as he was very well known for his bizarre moustache creations.

I started off with a line drawing that I had created. I then erased the moustache in photoshop and added a title and some text so the reader knows what to do. I decided to keep the image un coloured to allow the reader to add their own colours if they want. 

Frida Kahlo Activity page

When thinking about what kind of activity page to create for Frida Kahlo the idea came to me to create a drawing of Frida with a flower crown that could be finished off by the person reading the book. This activity seemed very fitting as Frida Kahlo wore a lot of pretty floral headwear.

 I started off with a drawing that I had previously done but not used. I then opened it up in photoshop and erased the flower crown and started off a new one to give the reader a bit of an idea of what to do. I also decided to keep the drawing as line work only so the reader can also choose to colour in the image their self if they choose too. I then finally added a title to the page and text to inform the reader of the instructions of the activity. Overall I am happy with how this activity Page turned out and I will follow a similar format with my other activity pages but I will change the activity making it appropriate to the artist that it relates too. 

Van Gogh's Starry Night Development

I wanted to include some of the artists work and to be able to do this I will have to create my own versions of the artists paintings. As I am including a fact about the Starry Night painting by Vincent Van Gogh I thought it would be fitting to start off with that. I started off by looking at his painting and mapping out where all of the main lines are. I did this in black to follow the format of all of the other drawings in the book. 

When I was happy with that I decided to add hints of colour underneath. I started off with yellow as that was one of the more predominant colours within his original painting. I chose a shade that I liked, I decided to choose a more contemporary mustard yellow to add to the modern feel of the book. 

I finally added some blue strokes to finish off the painting. I wanted to keep it very loose and modern to give it a bit of a twist and make it feel more fitting with the rest of the book. Again I chose a more subdued shade of blue to complement the yellow. I also added a little bit of dark blue to darken up some areas of the image. 

Overall I am happy with how this image turned out and I think it will go nicely with the rest of the images in the book.