Research Ladybird books

Over the easter holidays i went to south shields (i think thats where it was,) and i found a great little book shop. Most of the books in it were second hand but it also sticked lots of illustrated special edition books, it was great! They had a big vintage ladybird book section so i had a really good rummage around to find some really nice vintage illustrated books. I picked up some interesting and unique ones that i liked. I thought i would write about them a bit on here.
Lady bird books is a publishers that publish exclusively for children. They have a large range of books ranging from factual to fiction. They started making little children's books covering all topics and stories in the 1940's. These packetise books were a huge hit and modern versions are still made now. I like the vintage books a lot more than the glossy new ones. I picked up three books, here is a bit about my two favourites.  

Talk about animals:
I decided to get the book talk about animals because all of the different styles of illustration throughout the book and i really like animals. It was Illustrated by Harry Winfield and has a real fun vintage feel about it. I really like the diversity of images throughout the book, i don't think iv'e ever seen a book with such a wide range of styles through it. I also love the colour palettes of some pages as they are so unique and bright, for example some pages have sickly pink backgrounds and bright yellow in the illustrations. It is so different but so representative of the time it was published (around the 1940's.) Here are a few of my favourite images from the book.

Hannibal runs away:
What first attracted me to this book is the strange title, what makes it more funny is that hannibal is a hamster. I picked it up and the front is cute as it is a realistic illustration of a hamster. Im usually not to keen on realistic drawings for children's books as i feel they aren't as visually exiting, but the end pages sold it to me as they are a really nice style pretty similar to the style of books that no brow make now. They have simplistic drawings of hamsters using a limited colour palette. I love the way that these pages look and think they are done in a very timeless style as a lot of illustrations now have a similar style. Here is an image of the end pages.

Photo story board

As i have almost finished all of the drawings for my book but i haven't quite sorted all of the backgrounds out yet, I decided to photograph how the scenes will look but using a plain black background for now. This is what i have so far. I have the last few scenes to draw out and the backgrounds to set up then i'm ready for the final photographs to be took. 

London trip

Last weekend we all (my class) went on a trip to London for 2 days. It was great The weather was lovely and we did lots of quirky unique things that i probably wouldn't have done if id went to London alone. We stayed in Shoreditch and explored artsy streets and book shops (there was so much art everywhere). The first day we visited a little art gallery/shop called the illustration cupboard, i really enjoyed it there because i had heard about it before and wanted to visit it, plus love looking at different original illustrations. We then went to the London transport museum and originally i wasn't looking forward to this much but I really enjoyed it and for a museum it wasn't boring at all, although it's pretty small so for the money you pay to get in there wasn't much :/. We then went to Foyles book shop a HUGE book shop, i loved it and could have quite happily have bought all of the books but i restrained myself. The last stop of the day was a comic book sighing in an amazing comic book shop with lots of books and comics. It was really cool going to a signing because i had never done anything like this before, and there was a really good atmosphere to the place.


The next day we got invited to tour the Nobrow shop and office, It was amazing to see where it all started. It was so inspiring and all of their books are wonderful and such high quality. I bought a lovely space book! We then explored Columbia road and a few other streets around the Shoreditch area. There was a lot of street art around it was so different and refreshing to see really nice art on all of the street walls. It was great i really loved the second day as it was so chilled and fun, plus the gorgeous weather helped a lot and made the whole day feel like i was inside an Instagram photo :') .


I think i will do some more detailed posts about Nobrow books and maybe a post about the street art?



Here are some photos from the weekend.

Illustration test shots

For my current narrative project as i am creating my illustrations in real life and then photographing the drawings in different compositions i couldn't decide weather i wanted my images to be in real backgrounds or drawn backgrounds. One day i was just sat thinking about it when Amy suggested that i try a few of the different options out to help me decide. She lent me her camera so me and a few class mates helped to create some little scenes to do some test shots in. Here are some of the photographs that we took. 

I absolutely love how these photos have turned out and i have decided that i am definitely going to have my drawings in real background sets that i have made out of found objects. The next step that i am going to take is to sit down and decide on what objects that i can use to create the different scenes from my story. I will then get all of the things together and create the sets. 

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)

Artist research Picnic illustration

I was searching for artists that create simple characters and i came across this french (i think i cant read french so i'm not sure if it even is french) artist called Picnic illustration. She (or he?) creates lovely simplistic art work, i just love the simple quirky look that the art work has about it. I also really like the selective block colours and line work that is used throughout the images. Looking at this artists work has really helped me out with realising that the images that i create don't have to be complicated to look good and have an impact.  Here are a few of the images that i really like.

Artist research: Papernoodle

Whilst looking for more artists that created illustrations with photographed scened i came across an artist called papernoodle that only creates art using bits of paper rather than drawing. The artist also created an animation for a museum, so it was good to see how everything worked for that. Looking at this artist was really helpful because it made me think about maybe layering some parts of my image up to give an even more 3-D look. I really love how unique all of the artists work as it is so neat and well done. looking at this artist and how he works has helped me out a lot with the technique of how to create my image in a 3D form. 

This video is really helpful because i can see how all of the different parts move. It is also helps because i have a forest scene in my story so it gives me some inspiration on how my forest might look.  

Here Is an image that i like by this artist.

I also found a step by step picture too that might help me out with the technique in the future.

Final image idea

So the class has a deadline for wednesday and were supposed to have out first image for out book done. I was sitting at my desk thinking about how i would execute my first image (digitally or traditionally) when Amy came over and suggested a great idea to me. She said that i should try making all of my characters and backgrounds then photographing them and using the photographs as the images instead of just drawing them. I loved the idea so i started thinking about how i could do it. I did a lot of stop motion last year in college so i am quite good at making backgrounds and settings. The first scene is set in the forrest so i started experimenting with how to make grass.

This was my first attempt at grass i think it worked well. I think that i will use this technique in my final image but i think i will use blue paper instead as in my original plan i was going to make the grass blue. I am going to continue to build up the rest of the image but this is all i've got so far.

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. 

Nobrow magazine research

I went to a comic book shop in newcastle to have a look at the Nobrow things that they had on sale. I decided to get a double issue magazine that was half full of comic strips and half full of illustrations. I decided to get the magazine because i love Nobrows simple yet effective and dramatic style plus i thought it would be good for research and inspiration for my current narrative brief.  I took a few photos from the magazine that inspire me and give me ideas for my brief.

This is the front cover i really like all of the black used it really makes the image and title stand out

The colour pallete in the comic strip above is extremely limited using only two colours along with the black and white. I think its amazing how using this little colours can work so well. This seems like a hard thing to do but i an going to attempt to use only 3 colours in my narrative. Hopefully this will help me to understand more how to do it. 

I like the comic strip art above because it shows that no brow also publish things with a bit of a different look compared to their usual style of using black outlines. I also really like the muted yellows and oranges used in the images.

I think the colour scheme used in the above comic strip is one of my favourites as the yellow makes the images pop and look really striking. I also think yellow black and white go really nicely together.

I chose to include the above comic strip because i like the unique style. It really stood out amongst most of the other comic strips. The characters are drawn with real character and its really nice to look at.

The above comic strip looks really dramatic and its because of all the black blocking used. This has given me a good idea of what to do if i have a dramatic scene in my story.

again i love the colours that are used in the image above i think they really complement each other well. I also like this comic strip because it is a bit different using 4/5 different shades of the same colour i think this gives a really nice effect.

The next few images are from the illustration section of the magazine. I love the image above because it is so unique and i didn't expect to se something like this in the magazine and it was a lovely surprise. it suggests the shape of the female form but at the same time is very abstract. i also like the lack of colour. I don't think i will do anything like this in my final images but i still like it.

The images above are quite typical of Nobrow with the strong block colours. the reason that i really like this image is because of its simplicity. Although it is simple it describes the characters really nicely. i am going to use the idea of simplicity in my final images.

The final image i think is very different for this magazine and thats why i chose to include it. I love the mood that the dark colours and dark grey clouds sets. i also really like the blue background it really stands out against the rest of the image. 

I learnt a lot from this magazine and i think it will help me throughout the whole project.