Research

Artists research

Beatrice Blue

I researched the Artist and illustrator Beatrice Blue for this assignment, I have her book ‘Wonder’ which she has written and illustrated herself, it is a book about her and her life, and her creative process, they way she works and tips and tricks to help someone who wants to illustrate books.

I found this book really helpful, and although I already had the book and had read it last year, I have re-read it to see if there is anything I can use for this assignment that would help me with the process.

Beatrice Blue is an Illustrator and art director, and now an author, Beatrice comes from Spain although now lives in Canada. Beatrice has done a lot of work for animation and publishing, and worked with companies like Nickelodeon, DreamWorks and Harper Collins to name but a few.

Beatrice used to work in traditional media, then started with digital, and now uses a mixture of the two, plus anything else she feels would work for her illustrations.

Beatrice talks about treasures in her book, ideas, inspiration, little things that she finds, hears, see’s or thinks of, that she builds up into her glass house (imaginary place). The glass house is empty when you first start as an illustrator, but then you gradually grow and build up your reserve in your glass house, of lots of different treasures that you can use in your stories or art work.

I have realised I have a lot of little treasures floating around my brain, and have thought of ideas recently that I had years ago, and how I could use them now in my work. I used to write books when I was a child, and I still have these manuscripts that I had worked on secretly in my bedroom, they are pretty wacky and I really did have a unique imagination back them! But luckily for me I think some of them are really good, or could be tweaked into something tangible to work with.

Beatrice puts precious details into her work, little drawings that only her or her family would know. I think that’s a good idea, as you need some level of detail in your work, but sometimes your stumped to think of what to put in, but if you have some little drawings, (it could be a drawing of your dog or cat as the character in the book), it could be an old backpack you used to have, or a budgie that your nan used to have. These all give little extras details that the viewer would love to spot, yet its personal to you.

Watercolour Alchemy:- Beatrice uses pigments to mix up her own watercolour colours, so she can mix the right paint colour she needs for the right drawing. Beatrice collects pigments from places she travels to, then brings them back to test them out, sometimes she finds the pigments herself from rocks or natural clay, and sometimes she buys them, Beatrice finds the hues and colours richer and more vibrant than the ones she buys.

This gave me an idea to experiment with, although I can’t buy my own pigments yet, they are too expense for me and my budget at the moment, I have looked into creating textures from watercolours, using salt and different materials to create great texture, and also I have just found out about granulation fluid.

Beatrice has since experimented with coloured pencils, marker pens, acrylic pens and ink, which has expanded her creative process.

Choosing a colour palette, selecting colours and colour development, Beatrice considers a few parts when selecting a colour palette, the mood of the image, the lighting, the narrative and the composition.

Character building, Beatrice creates small stories behind the characters to give them a back story, so she knows more details about them, that not even the reader knows! Beatrice looks for Personality, pose, expression and attitude, and colour and shape, when developing characters.

Victoria Semykina

Victoria Semykina is a Russian born Illustrator, who now lives in Italy, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine arts in Bologna.

Victoria uses traditional media like watercolours, acrylics and gouache paint, along side collage and found papers and also digital work to combine them together.

Semykina V (2009) Capri [Watercolour on paper] http://www.semykina.com

Victoria has a love of ships which are prominent in her illustrations and art work, as well as illustrations and drawings of sailers and fish and all things sea related.

I like Victorias way of incorporating texture through pattern, as a surface pattern designer, I would really to incorporate my designs into my illustration for books, I think this would give a different perspective and be quite unique.

Semykina V (2012) [Watercolour and pen on paper] http://www.semykina.com

Although Victoria collages are where she finds her texture, mine would be using my patterns digitally over my traditional work to give the pattern reference, rather than it being cut out and stuck on.

Below is a good example of her patterned collaged work on the mans clothing.

Semykina V (2010) [Watercolour and collage on paper] http://www.semykina.com

I’m not sure I am going to be able to incorporate my ideas for including patterns into this assignment, but I hope to pick this idea up later or in the next assignment or unit to progress with this further.

Market research

Bologna Children’s Book Fair

After researching Beatrice’s work and process, I thought I would look into more about market trends for picture books and publishing. So I found out about the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which is held every year in Italy. I have a few acquaintances that have actually gone there this week, as it’s on from the 6-9th March.

The Bologna Children’s book fair is an industry leading event, that brings together a global audience, the result is a exchange hub for publishing and licensing businesses for children’s stories, illustration, animation and literature.

People flock to the event every spring to look at the world of books and products, with booth’s, halls and awards, it’s the place to be if your looking to get into children’s publishing in anyway.

The book fair began in 1964 and is a yearly event held over four days in March or April, the illustrators exhibition presents works which are selected by a jury, over 3000 works are entered into this exhibition, then whittled down for the exhibition itself.

The book fair also holds the Bologna Ragazzi Awards, a major award in four categories, (Fiction, Non-Fiction, New horizons and Opera Prima). Also there are awards like Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

You can go to the fair as a exhibitor and also as a member of the public, obviously there are people from the publishing world, media, graphics designers, printers, distributers, booksellers, authors, translators, agents, brands, teachers and librarians that all visit and or take part in the fair.

I found out about the silent book contest, which I thought was a really interesting idea. I think this is a good topic for inclusion and for helping children that are disabled to still be able to enjoy books just by following the visual illustrations.

From my acquaintances: they have all gone as illustrators and potential children’s book illustrators and authors, but they have gone as members of the public just to see what the fair is about, what to expect if they ever were to exhibit, and to just make contacts, meet up with friends, and talk to some other illustrators, exhibitors and publishing companies.

Silent books

Silent books are a area of children’s literature, wordless picture books, or silent books as they are known, are visual narrations offering readers the chance to experiment with new ways of reading images and using words.

Silent books can help children develop critical thinking, meaning and storytelling, it doesn’t matter what level the child is at with their reading level, they can see the story through the illustrations.

There are also silent books which are for younger children, babies, toddlers and pre-school age, these are called quiet books as well, they help improve motor skills, cognitive skills, basic literacy, memorisation, identification, and hand-eye coordination.

Silent books are also good when uniting children from all over the world, as it doesn’t matter what language they speak they can all enjoy the same book and read and look at it at the same time, as the story is told through the visuals.

Visual research

The Woods

On Saturday I went to my local woods to have a walk and do some panoramic photography, and get some ideas and inspiration for my assignment. It was actually supposed to be a cloudy rainy day, which is what I wanted to capture some atmosphere in my photos, but when we got to the woods it actually turned out sunny and bright! (always the way)

I did these three panoramic photos: I really like the last one, it gave more detail and I really like the composition it created.

Imagination

Imagination is the process of ideas, sensations, simulation of novel objects in the mind without any immediate input of the senses.

These can be formations of things in the past, memories, fantastic scenes, re-creations and imagined changes. The ability to form mental pictures of people or things, or to have new ideas.

I have found that there are two types of imagination, yet some people say there are eight types of imagination:-

The two types: Synthetic imagination and creative imagination, the difference between the two are that synthetic imagination consists of the act of combining recognised ideas, concepts, plans, facts and principles in new arrangements. Whereas creative imagination is found in the subconscious mind, it exists through a power unknown to man, the ability to create and interpret new ideas never before known to man.

What are the best sizes for children’s picture books?

Portrait : 7×9, 7.5×9.25, 8×10, and 8.5×11 inches

Landscape : 10×8, and 11×8.5 inches

Square : 8×8, 8.5×8.5, 9×9 and 10×10 inches

Practical research

How do I add texture to create an atmosphere?

I have looked into some You Tube videos of artists that use texture and different mediums in their work, I looked at the landscape artist Natasha Newton. Natasha uses a lot of specialised paints as well as known brands, I found out about the self granulating paints by Schmincke Horadam from Natasha’s videos, and Daniel Smith also do some self granulating paints. I loved the effects these paints gave as they separated and granulated whilst drying. These would be great paints to create a moody atmosphere!

These paints are quite expensive, so I ordered one 1/2 pan in Desert green by Schmincke Horadam, and I also ordered some granulating fluid to use with my existing watercolour paints, to get the same effect without the expense.

I started my colour test experiments with existing watercolour paints and chose colours to reflect a woodland moody atmosphere, also these are paints I don’t usually use and colours out of my comfort zone.

I started by swatching the colours I had chosen so I could compare the granulation effect on them after. I chose to swatch:-

Hookers green light

Indian Red

Burnt Sienna

Raw Sienna

Cadmium Red deep hue

Berlin Blue

Paynes grey

Potters pink

Forest Green by Schmincke Horadam (self granulating)

I then swatched the colours out again, but this time used the self gratulation fluid instead of water.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much difference! The granulation fluid was very subtle, and only seemed to work slightly on the darker colours like Paynes Grey.

I then looked back over the colours and changed a few out after swatching a few others from my collection, some colours were too bright for the moody scenes.

I decided to go with:-

Hookers green light

Indian red

Burnt sienna

Raw Sienna

Permanent red deep (changed to this deeper red)

Berlin Blue

Paynes grey

Raw Umber (added for another warmer brown)

Potters pink

Forest green

The brighter colours like the blue and the red are only for highlights so they will be minimal, yes a very different colour palette than I am used too.

How to use photography to help me with composition?

Whilst I was out in the woods taking photos I started to think about composition, and how I could take photos from different angles to create unusual compositions.

I came up with the idea I already had and mentioned in this research, which was looking up through the trees.

Also I thought about creatures that lived on the woods and what there visual view point would be, so I came up with some photos that where looking through things like leaves.

These ideas and photos haven given me more things to think about for the compositions, but I’,m really happy with were this is taking me and my illustrations.