Once upon a time
Produce a series of black and white illustrations in response to a popular fairy story or folk tale of your choice. Your illustrations will sit alongside the text to enhance the reading experience.
Think about best points in the narrative to place your illustrations. Your illustrations need to bring the characters, locations and plot of the story to life. But you don’t have to do all of this in one illustration, so think about introducing different aspects across a range of illustrations. Make the most of the dramatic qualities of black and white.
Think about where you’d physically place your images in relationship to the text on the page. Are these illustrations full page or vignettes? Do you incorporate some of the story’s text into your work or do they stand alone as images?
Research
I started this exercise by doing some research for the fairy tales, unfortunately I don’t have any in my collection of children’s books, so I needed to research online.
I found a site that had the top five fairy tales and looked into these titles:-
Cinderella
Beauty and the Beast
Hansel and Gretel
The Emperors New clothes
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
But I wanted to keep along the same lines as what we had been learning so far in this section, which was to show contrasting sides to illustrations, so I researched into Little Red Riding Hood, because this had a dark undertone to the story, that could be illustrated well, against the sweet naivety of the girl.
Little Red Riding Hood
It’s not known who wrote little red riding hood as it has had many alterations through time, and is told differently country to country for religious reasons.
But it can date back to the 11th century poem written by a priest, then again some say it was first written by Charles Peerault in the 17th century. With both it is the result of folklore tradition and stories told by generations that change with each new modern version.
Illustration research on Pinterest below:-
The wolf is a metaphor for a predator, the story is about how some people aren’t who they seem to be, which is a lesson for children in life. If you trust someone even they can let you down or harm you, as you become vulnerable to them through trusting them they can have harmful intentions towards us.
Key words from the diagram above :- I decided to use extra keywords as I wanted some for each illustration, there would be five illustrations for the five parts to a story.
Young girl, basket, red cloak, woods, trees.
Wolf, dark, teeth, big.
Grandma, old, nightwear, bed.
Death, eaten, gobbled, gone.
Woodcutter, hero, strong.
My initial break down of the story is in 5 parts:-
- Red riding hood in the woods, happily walking to grandmas house.
- Red riding hood meets the wolf.
- Grandmas house where she is sleeping.
- Grandma is eaten by the wolf.
- The woodcutter comes to the rescue.
This may change during the development of the thumbnails and working on ideas for each illustration, but I think these points in the story break down the words into 5 illustrations well, that condense the writing down.
Development ideas
I found this You Tube video of the story of Little Red Riding Hood by Leanne Guenther, I then worked this into a 10 page spread, using 5 illustrations to work on each full page spread.
I worked out what each page needed in paragraphs and the best illustrations to use from those words to describe the scene.
I want to work on Procreate again on my iPad, I think working in black and white will really help with thinking about texture and brushes to use.
I started with sketching Red riding hood in the woods walking towards grandmas house, I used some photos from my previous assignment to use as reference for the woods and trees at Belhus woods.
I added in the basket, some flowers and a butterfly to show the contrast between happy and the bare dark woods.
I then went on to sketch when red riding hood meets the wolf, again I used some reference photos from our local woods, then sketched the wolf and red riding as a they meet.
The third thumbnail is of Grandma at her house, I decided to sketch her in bed, I thought this gave a cosy, relaxed feel, a sense of security before the climax to the story happens!
I then wanted to get a large bold illustration for when the wolf gobbles up grandma, but I didn’t want it to be too graphic and gory.
The last illustration is of the woodcutter coming to the rescue, Grandma has been thrown up, and red riding is ok in the background, with the wood cutter clutching the wolf.
I will change a few bits on these and do some annotations to get them right, but I’m happy so far, I’ll develop one of these further for the next section, and add the black and texture to it.
Artwork
I did the annotations, at first I wanted to colour red readings cloak in black, and the trees on this illustration, keeping the rest white, but when it came to the next scene, I wanted the wolf in black to show the danger and menace he is, so thought white would be better, and would show the purity of red riding and her kindness.
For grandma in bed, I wanted the bed frame to be in black, but her and the bed clothes in white, but I would just add some soft textures to make it more alive.
With the wolf and his teeth, I wanted the whole of him in black to show the drama against the white paper. I chose some different textures to colour in black to add more difference, and to make the features stand out.
For the end scene I chose to focus the black colours still on the wolf, but also on the axe, to show the danger of the woodcutters tools! Red riding and her grandma would still be in white, as well as the woodcutter to show the white good side vs the black dark bad side.
I went back and did these annotations for the five illustrations.
I then focused on just the one illustration of the wolf as I felt this was the most successful one, and dynamic to develop this further.
I started by going through the brushes that I thought would add some good textures to the illustrations, and made a texture sheet.
The final illustration that I have chosen that’s the best is this one, its dynamic, and the black with the different textures really works well. This is when the wolf is just about to gobble granny up, and he does look fierce and hungry!
Summery
What went well?
The plan of the pages went well, I think five was a good amount for the story, and works well with the plan arc from the previous research.
Getting to grips more and trying out more textures and brushes, working in just black helped to see the different effects they make in just one colour, which helped to limited them down so I could choose the most appropriate ones.
The final illustration has the most action, and the best one that describes how the wolf is very scary.
What would I do differently/ better
I think the other illustrations could have been a bit more dynamic in some ways, but it does help the wolf one to pop out more, and have more impact.
I would add a book mock up of the page with the writing and final illustration, just to see what it would look like realistically.
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