Project: Self-publishing

Research point

The fanzines are often produced by individuals by their own money. These little books are mostly focused on a specific group of people. I remember when I was in high school and I was publishing the small fanzines for the fan-club of some famous singers in Poland. It was so much fun to keep updating the group of fans with the latest news about that specific pop star. I have mainly used A4 paper, some posts were written by hands and some articles were written on the computer. The last stage was to past all the information with some illustrations and pictures and then print them out using local printer. I am talking about the times when it was really hard to find good news in the media and the social media was not so popular and so fast as these days.  

Exercise: Self-publishing

I am going to work on the little book about a boy who plays with animals peek-a-boo game around the Stonehenge area. This idea for the story came to my mind after the holydays I have spend near Stonehenge. This place is truly incredible in my opinion and it is worth of motioned in the book for the little toddlers. I have a lot of sketches of Stonehenge in my sketch book I have also made a few while I was in the Longley Park this summer. This task is about creating a story from the ideas and existing sketches from the sketch book therefore I think it is perfect opportunity to us my summer observations.

 

I will start from the little sketch of how I wish my page would look like.  

Then I will scan some of my previous sketches and combine then in the Photoshop with the others to create a good illustration.

I am fascinated with the author and illustrator Emily Gravett who in clever way uses her pencil drawings in her books. Her illustrations are mainly done with HB pencil and the she adds some more colours to the illustration. The charm of her illustrations is captured in the visible pencil lines. I would like to make a similar effect with my illustrations this time. Will i achieve a similar sweet and quite look of my illustrations and the boy who will be paying with the animals? I hope I will. I am going to use pictures of my little son as a reference to creating the boy's character.

 

These are my sketches from my sketch book from my holydays 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my first illustration. I placed a little boy on the top of the Stonehenge in the right corner.

This is my second illustration where the parrot appears on the top of the Stonehenge.

This is my third illustration where the rhino appears from the behind of the Stonehenge in the middle of the page.
The next fourth illustration represents the rhino with the little boy on his back having a good fun in front of the Stonehenge.















This fifth illustration shows a little meerkat behind the Stonehenge on the left side of the page.

And there he is on the sixth illustration a very happy meerkat in front of the Stonehenge.

 

 

 

 

 

Reference point :

 

 

 

The Introduction to illustration is very helpful short clip explaining how to use ink to create the illustration. It will be useful for me at this stage of my illustration.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3oUFXq6Msc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

day 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have started this exercise by looking into my sketch-book. Once I was happy with the selection of sketches I started to draw a small design of the page just to see which solution would be the best. I think that this exercise helped me to make the best use of my sketchbook as I usually don't make artwork based on already existing ideas.

 

I was also lucky to have pictures from my holidays which were another point of reference. I can definitely say my drawings helped me to create my final work. I also researched during the creative process just to make sure that I was going in the right direction with my project.

 

I have used different media and skills through this exercise as follows:

·         pencil/fine brushes

·         paper (A4 size)

·         water-proof colour ink

·         crayons

·         scanning

·         working on the illustrations with Photoshop

·         printing

·         painting

·         glue (PVA)

 

I think I managed to use my skills and combined the artistic techniques in a successful way. I have found some small technical difficulties with the media I used which was the illustration printed on ordinary printing paper. I realised that this was not a good material for sticking one page to another as it got wet and the page was not as smooth any more, it was bubbly and the surface soon crinkled.

 

I am very happy with the colour, the lines as well as the shape of my drawings and paintings, they are integral to the overall creative process.

 

I was driven by own experiences and wanted to translate them and transfer to paper. I was inspired by the children's' book illustrator Emily Gravett. She definitely had a big impact on the overall look of my little book. Once I knew the technical style I wanted to achieve it was easy for me to create the book as I knew which style I needed to stick to.

 

 

I think Emily's Gravett books like: "Meerkat Mail", "Monkey and Me", "Wolves" affected my own work a lot in positive sense of that. Especially when I look at the pencil lines I was operating with or the page execution will clearly shows the influence of this illustrator. I am also glad with the number of pencil lines I have left visible through the thin layer of waterproof ink.  I am very far from comparing myself to her; however it is nice to get the inspiration from such a good artist like her. I know her illustrations are much more polished and very professional as her style is very much so developed. Clearly she spends a lot of time on each individual illustration which I can see this is the element my illustrations are lacking.

 

To describe my final outcome I can proudly say it is something I would like to work on bit more in the future. The picture book is cute enough for the young audience in my opinion. The size is small but I could work on a bit bigger size in the future. As well the plot and lines need to be more polished. Despite all these aspect I am very much so a fan of my little fanzine.