Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 5: Words and pictures-Exercise 6: Working for children
Collect as many examples of imagery for children as possible. Group the illustrations you’ve collected into the target age groups. Include at least one image for each age group.
Pre-reader
Pre-school (3–5)
Early reader (5-7)
Established reader (7–9)
Older age groups
Take two of these age groups and, for each one, go through a process of brainstorming around at least one word chosen from this list:
Festival
Scary
Wild
Growing
Journey
Sad
Family
Discovery
Pick an animal appropriate for each age group and brainstorm to identify themes, images and ideas pertinent to your age groups.
Create a simple image of your animal engaged in an activity that communicates this word. Be conscious of the need to achieve stylistic consistency in the development of all the content you include within your imagery. Remember that you’re creating the world in which your character operates.
Explore the colours and materials to use for your illustration. You’re engaging in a process of visual communication and you need to be conscious of the nature of your visual language in the same way as you would use language when speaking to a child.
Are the target age brackets for children really as clear-cut as we’ve made them here? How did the function of image and text differ within the different age groupings? What is your response to the idea ‘all children’s illustration has bright colours’? Make notes in your learning log.
Eric Carle’s work is great. I remember liking the hungry caterpillar as a child and looking back I can see why. Carle’s illustrations are great, an interesting collage style full of colour and texture.
I made some initial notes, later moving onto creating some thumbnails with ideas. I liked the idea of the giraffe necks stretching higher to visually represent growth. As this is a pre- reader text is not the most important part, I decided to try to create an illustration without any text as a challenge to represent the word for the age group.
I feel as if children’s illustrations should be either colourful, or so visually interesting that they cannot be ignored. I aimed for my illustration to be able to communicate without text to a pre reader the concept of growth and to remain engaging. This was a harder task using no text but I tried to convey ‘growth’ through the size of the giraffe and the background. I used the green bottom to represent the upper trees, the blue sky with clouds and then a space scape at the top with stars. The exaggeration of the height of the giraffe I hoped to be fun and entertaining for a pre reader.
I added various paper textures cut out using straight lines, inspired by Eric Carle. I then added pencil marks on top in an attempt to add depth to the illustration. I didn’t want to over crowd the image but also did not want it to be boring. Perhaps the addition of further objects in the background could be beneficial, for example a rocket ship in the space scape section to further exaggerate the size of the giraffe, or some birds/ a plane in the sky.
I began by collating some examples of illustrations for varied ages. The illustrations were taken from books and tv shows. I tried to distinguish between the ages and what would be age appropriate, this was harder with the younger ages as this is less definite.
I created various textures, including some using spray paint, initially with the idea for it being used as the neck of the giraffe. After some experimenting I found the combination of different brush stroke textures to work better.
I experimented with different colours, moving back to the more ‘realistic’ colouring of the giraffe as the background colours were more bold.
Inspired by Tom Buamgaertel and Alex Wheatle’s book covers I decided on a silhouette style for the older aged cover and word ‘discovery’. The older age cover needs to still be engaging, interesting and able to convey the word to the viewer but also be part of the same ‘series’ as the previous illustration.
Tom Buamgaertel is a photographer/videographer who has a distinct style. They use silhouettes and exaggerated skyline colours to produce almost painting-like images. I like this style, particularly inspired by the illustrator of Alex Wheatle’s books who’s name I cannot seem to find (shown on older ages mood board).
I aimed for the monkey swinging from a branch to represent discovery, with the mountains in the background and the sunrise. I began by making a sketch of the main image, adding details in Photoshop and adding various textures/materials to create some depth and texture.
I am unsure if ‘discovery’ is that explicit within this image without text, or if it conveys the idea as much as I had hoped it would. I wanted the sun rise to be more obvious, with the lighter highlights on the mountains in the background- aiming to distinguish from a sunset as a sunrise feels more ‘fresh’ and like a ‘new day’ to discover etc.
I chose various textures that I felt suited different parts of the illustration, for example the tree texture is a digitised version of paint rolled marks and the leaves are in pen. The overall colour palette for this image is very similar to the previous, but more muted tones for an older age group and darker to represent the time of day.
Looking back at my thumbnails, perhaps the ones including the binoculars could’ve been better suited to show ‘discovery’ with the inclusion of my animal illustration in the lens of the binocular or as a photograph next to it etc. The monkey or animal could of also been engaging in something more explicitly representing ‘discovery’ or even something as simple as the other hand of the monkey pointing at something in the distance, or over turning a rock.
