Wednesday, September 3, 2008

New project

This is a piece I am working on for a promotional book I making....
Promotional book, you ask...
My husband and I have rewritten the fable The Tortoise and the Hare into a racing story and I am doing 6, maybe 8 illustrations to accompany this story that I will finish and then put together in book form. It will showcase my ability to create good compositions for the different types of illustrations, it will show how I can draw the different elements from strange and dynamic angles and display how I can move characters through a story. Then I plan to send it out to publishers and editors on my mailing list. I am hoping to send it out next spring just after my next book comes out....

This piece is Turtle making a block on Hare to take the checkered flag. 
It is a double page spread. 
Let me know what you think!

4 comments:

lindsay.illustration@gmail.com said...

I'm excited to see the finished product! The early sketches look very lively and interesting, particularly their facial expressions and the angle of being right down at street level.

One thing I notice is that I am only focused on the right side of the spread. That's where all the energy of the page is. If the left side is intentionally sparse for putting text there, cool. If there will be no text there, perhaps you should also build up some interesting focal point there, too so the spread is balanced.

Nikki said...

I try to be careful of not drawing the action going from right to left, because you want to encourage the reader to turn to the next page with you composition flow... But that is proving to be close to impossible when illustrating racing... I was hoping that with the flag angled the way it is and putting the text underneath that it might help flow your eye over to the right page and then turn the page...

lindsay.illustration@gmail.com said...

Good thinking!

eleanor said...

hi nikki-
Looks great! My suggestion would be to make the flag overlap a little in front of the character on the left. Maybe just over the front wheel or over the arm, but just to give a greater sense of perspective. That way there is a clear foreground, middle and back.