I’ve been taking part in some free assignments set by Lilla Rogers on the http://makeartthatsells.com/blog/ in readiness for the Illustrating Children’s Books course. This illustration was for assignment no.4 where we tackled depth and perspective.
I LOVED this task. I didn’t think I would as it’s something I wouldn’t normally do, but by being asked to work on something that was alien to myself, it really got those creative cogs whirring. I think this is one of the best illustrations I’ve done to date because it feels like a complete image. I don’t often do a full spread, and my images up until now have been focused on character (and not placed in to a setting). I’d like to work on more settings over the next month or two, placing characters into an environment really brings the whole thing to life.
For this assignment I thought I’d use it as an experimentation exercise. A lot of my illustrations so far have been quite flat so for this I thought I’d play around with texture and I also wanted to limit my colour palette so that the focus would just be on the birds. I also wanted to focus on a different medium so chose gouache (I’m usually a watercolour gal!), adding details with my coloured pencils. I had a panicky moment halfway through and wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing, but I persevered and I’m so glad I did.
I wanted to draw birds for this task. Pigeons usually get a bad rep, for being dirty little beggars that pester people in towns and cities. BUT when I looked closer at the colours on there bodies, the patterns on their wings, they really did look pretty. (Not quite the social villains I had them down for???)