The book of nonsense illustration

I decided to start work on my illustration for the book of nonsense by Colin west this weekend. Originally i was going to do the poem about hats, but as we were working based on the illustrations that were already in the book i decided to change my mind as there was about 10 illustrations for one poem. As i am already working on the Nobrow brief i decided to give myself less of a challenge so it would be more manageable within the time for me. I have decided to now work on a poem about a fat cat and a skinny king.

I started off sketching kings but the sketched were coming out quite dark and creepy. I think i scared myself a little with them as i haven't really drawn anything this scary before. I decided not to take these drawings any further but here are the creepy sketches that i originally did.

I then read through the poem a few times and i realised that the poem didn't state what kind of king the poem was about. I then started to think outside of the box and thought about i would find funny to draw as i like to create humours illustrations. I decided to make a little character that is king of the hipsters (who doesn't like to draw a good hipster). Here is some of my development and the final illustration.

I used pencil to map out the drawing and gouache, crayon and coloured pencil for the colour. I am really happy with the final illustration, i think this is the first time in ages that i have created an illustration that i have been really happy with. (Yey)

Unicorn Development

When i started to develop my unicorn i decided to draw lost of different head and face shapes until i got it right. I also experimented with a few different colours, I wanted to keep it simple so in the end i decided to stick with black outlines and yellow highlights. Here are the first few sketches that i did.

As i thought this was going to be the unicorn i was going to use i drew the unicorn with a few different expressions to see how it would work. I really like how the expressions turned out. 

I then after looking at the unicorn for a while decided that the horn needed to be changed. it needed to be angled more foreword pointing as it looked like it could have jut been a horse wearing a party hat. After doing a few horn tweaks and a bit or research into unicorns, i decided to just place the horn more central on the head use the top unicorn as my final one. I really like the body at the bottom of the page so this is the body shape that i am going to use for my unicorns and my pony. 

Character development research Oliver Jeffers

As i continued doing character development i decided to do research into different illustrators book making/character development processes. Amy showed the class a video about Oliver Jefferes and his process today and i really enjoyed it so here is that video:

I then found another video featuring Oliver Jeffers but this video os more focused on his book making process. Here is this video:

These videos have inspired me to just draw more of my characters no matter how rough they are. No one will see them in the final book so it doesn't really matter what they look like. This sounds really silly but iv'e been scared of re drawing my characters recently. Ive been scared incase i draw them wrong or incase i draw them too much and start to hate them, but i need to just get on and do it, because in the end i know that it will help me out a lot more. 

Character development Humans: Girl

I decided to develop a girl character as i needed someone to throw the ice cream into the bin in my story. I had previously doodled a girl with a funky hairstyle and i really liked it so i decided to develop and refine this character. I wanted the girl to look a bit adventurous with her style and hair because, as she is in the land of left out, i wanted her to look different to the average person you might see walking down the street. Here are a few ideas that i sketched down for the outfit ideas that i had.

Here is the first rough sketch that i did of the girl character it is a bit funny looking because i think i drew it on  a moving bus. I liked the funky hairstyle it was inspired by Hayley Williams hair as she often has funky hair colours and crazy styles.

Here is a more refined drawing of the girl character, I drew it in fine liner to give it a neater look. I decided to give all of the humans in the story pink hair, all of the unicorns have yellow horns and accents so i thought it would be good to do something similar with the humans. 

I then decided to change a few things as the character looked a bit evil so i decided to make her chin smaller and her eyebrows less arched. I also decided to give her a watermelon print dress to make her outfit look a bit more unique. i  like the final look that she has and i think it will work well within my story. 

character development research Neesha Hudson

I decided to do some research into artists that have done character development. I have wrote about this artist before but i was looking through some of her work recently and saw that she has done a lot of really nice character development. I love how she draws different variations of the character until the best one is achieved. This is what i intend to do with my characters. I also love how much you can tell from the character with how it is drawn. I hope to achieve this with my characters. I love the smooth pencily line quality to her drawings. Below are a few of my favourite  character development sheets of hers.

I love the drawings in the sketch book above they all have so much character and you can tell what the cat is like from the drawings. i hope to do this with my characters. 

I love all of the different options that there is for the same character i am going to apply this idea to my work and draw a lot of different ideas for my characters.

when i have decided on what my characters will look like i will create a sheet like the one above showing the characters from all different angles and showing different expressions.