If you have seen my work before, you'll see that I enjoy painting onto different surfaces other then normal paper. For example 'This Way Up' is all illustrated onto recycled cardboard boxes, as the story is based on the story of a cardboard box.
As the Lancashire Book Award is all about books, I thought it only right that I should try to illustrate onto a book of the Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award Illustration.
So here's me having a go the past few weeks...
First of all I scanned in and printed old book so practice working in the rectangular format.
Then I developed some ideas and sketches for the imagery...
I decided to work with Lancashire's landscape; green and rolling with Pendle Hill in thebackground. I played witht the idea of turnng the rlling hills into giant ice creams or dragons. I decided to stick with the dragon idea as it appeals to both boys and girls and seemed 'healthier' than a mountain of sweet stuff.
After this I went onto colouring in the illustration, then played about with the composition. As I work in actual layers of cut out collages, it is easy for me to move elements around the page and see what works best, but if you are just painting straight onto your canvas you should plan where everything is going first.
I was nearly finished but I felt the 'imagination' was too rectangular, so used a scalpel to carefully cut out clouds around the coloured illustration, to add softer edges and more of a layered effect.
And then I was finished!
I hope you like it. :) x
