Part 3: Exercise - Once Upon a Time

 Researching black and white illustrations:

Variety of different styles, I like the linework and dotted ones.

Graphicmama.com. 2022. Amazing Black-and-White Illustrations that Don't Need Color to Impress | GraphicMama Blog. [online] Available at: <https://graphicmama.com/blog/black-and-white-illustrations/> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

Striking papercut style illustrations, quite disturbing but bold.

Popova, M., 2022. Artist Andrea Dezsö’s Enchanting Black-and-White Illustrations for the Little-Known Original Edition of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: <https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/11/10/andrea-dezso-brothers-grimm-fairy-tales-interview/> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

Library.ivytech.edu. 2022. Ivy Tech Libraries: Children's Literature - Indianapolis - Fables, folk and fairy tales: Fable, Folk and Fairy Tale Titles. [online] Available at: <https://library.ivytech.edu/c.php?g=231279&p=1534896> [Accessed 3 May 2022].

My favourite childhood illustrator of black and white images: Jan Pienkowski - Christmas book

the Guardian. 2022. Jan Pieńkowski obituary. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/20/jan-pienkowski-obituary> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

the Guardian. 2022. Jan Pienkowski, illustrator. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2008/dec/19/booksforchildrenandteenagers> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

My favourite adult illustrator of black and white: Rob Ryan

the Guardian. 2022. Rob Ryan: 'My art isn't very edgy, but I’m not that kind of artist'. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/05/rob-ryan-my-art-isnt-edgy-yorkshire-sculpture-park> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

Narrowed it down to my favourite childhood stories.

• The town mouse and the country mouse
• Puss in boots
• Three little pigs
• Tortoise and the Hare.
• Hansel and Gretal
• Elves and the Shoemaker

I chose Hansel and Gretal because I love the gingerbread house and really wanted to illustrate that.

Initial sketchbook pages:

Age: 5 - 9

Trying silouette.

Made my own old paper from my photo of cartridge paper and then added colour and speckles in Procreate.

Line sketch in Procreate before details.

Adding more details.

Simple version with short story text.

Full page illustration to sit next to the story page on the left side.

Longer story version with illustration as a vignette above the story text.

Lipsum.com. 2022. Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator. [online] Available at: <https://www.lipsum.com/feed/html> [Accessed 16 May 2022].

Reflections:

I found this exercise so much harder than I thought I would. Initially I was really excited to try these illustrations and especially to illustrate the gingerbread house. But I soon found trying to simplify the images and also to choose which elements to keep black and what to have white, I just really struggled to get my head around it. I wanted to add trees framing the gingerbread house, like you were looking through the trees in the woods to see the house in the clearing but I just couldn't get it to work how I wanted it to. 

I also found it really challenging knowing what age group these illustrations would suit. I based my inspiration on illustrations from Beatrix Potter and Joyce Lankaster Brisley and of course these were a different era and so illustrating that way then was good because it saved costs at the printers do to the high cost of ink. At the time they wanted people to be able to afford the books so they kept the colours minimal. Nowadays, most children's books are full of bright colour illustrations to grab their attention. I found this conflicting my decisions and just made the process harder for me. In the end I gave up with this exercise as I wanted to put more time into the others.