The Selfish Giant Update & Illustration Friday

Now that inktober is over I really want to get back into my Selfish Giant project and get the ball rolling again. I have had difficulty with this as there are a few things I want to change about the images I have already made for the project and so I thought it would be best just to go back into my sketchbook to practice the visual elements for the project. One way I began this was just painting medieval inspired plants that will be featured in a lot of the background of the illustrations ust to help get back into the project, and, as this week’s illustration Friday is Bouquet I thought it would fit in very well with that theme.

The Selfish Giant: Sketchbook Work

Here is some rough sketchbook work and ideas from my on going Selfish Giant project, including a rough idea for a book cover, experiments with dip pen and sepia ink and rough ideas for the look of the Giant’s castle, which is mainly inspired by Cardiff Castle. Even though it’s just a rough idea, I’m not too pleased with the book cover design as I think I need something which captures the story more rather than just recreating the medieval style for the sake of it, so this is something that is definitely going to be changed at some point. The dip pen experiments didn’t last very long or really lead anywhere and so I don’t think I’ll be exploring that any further for this project, however it was still fun to use a dip pen and ink again so at some point I may end up using it, possibly for small outlines.

I really struggled with the design of the Giant’s castle and still aren’t too happy with it. I wanted something that combined both my research from Cardiff Castle and my research from medieval manuscripts and illustration and don’t think I’ve quite got there yet, however this is something that I think I’m coming closer to achieving as I’ve continued my research. I think I may have been over complicating the design of the castle and may need to simplify it more. As, well as this, I’ve included two images from my earlier compositions that I’ve redrawn in a landscape form in order to included more detail and to possibly use as a double page spread in the book. I quite like this idea of possibly having one or two double page illustrations in the book and may explore this more later on when I have sorted out my colour palette and other illustrations. I’m more happy with the first image and think that works better as a double page spread, particularly with the castle in the middle, however, I am still working on the finalization of the design for the Giant’s garden and think the second illustration would work better when that has been decided. Also, I believe both would look great with colour, especially because they would feature opposing colours, as one of them is set in the winter, the other in the summer.

The Selfish Giant: Composition Ideas

Here are some composition ideas from my Selfish Giant project, drawn in my sketchbook with graphite pencils. These compositions took me quite a while to get right, however I’m really happy with the final result and was pleased to receive positive feedback on them from my tutors as well. I used a variety of inspiration for these compositions, all taken from my research into medieval manuscripts and illumination as well as religious icons and paintings, and I have illustrated some of the key scenes from the story. I really played around with the use of nature and architecture in relation to the characters in my compositions, using many resources from the places I have visited as part of my research for this project, and I am pleased with the final result.

Even though I was very happy overall with these compositions, especially since I really took my time with them, there was a few that I wanted to tweak a bit and so I redid some of them which can be seen below. I think I prefer these ones mostly, but I’m still not too sure about The Wall image so I may end up creating a combination of the two different versions. Overall though I have really enjoyed this part of the project and feel like I’m definitely starting to find myself within my work and am a lot more comfortable with how I am working, my next step however is to begin applying colour to my work, and this is something that I also really want to get right and spend quite a bit of time on.

The Selfish Giant: Character Studies.

My next step for this project was to draw my characters in more detail and focus on their facial features, which I did using a simple graphite pencil. I tried my best to make each of the characters look individual, particularly with the faces, and found it very helpful to draw their faces in different positions rather than just profile, which I actually found the hardest to draw. Despite this, I think the characters will begin to look more individual when they have different expressions unlike in these current drawings, but at this point of the project, I just wanted to focus drawing basic faces. As I really wanted to use this part of the project as an opportunity to really refine my drawing skill, I studied the work of the Pre Raphaelites in particular, as well as medieval manuscripts, in order to help with my basic drawing skills.
The part of the project was very challenging because I was drawing different people of varying ages and I really wanted to get it right, however it was very worth while as I have gotten used to drawing different people and clothing, something which I have always struggled with, but, I am really pleased with the overall final result and hopefully with more practice I’ll be able to draw like this quicker as well as easier. My next step for this project will be to focus on architecture, and there are many places around Cardiff I can visit to study that aspect.

The Selfish Giant: Character Designs

After my research into medieval costume, I began to design the characters from the story, using the research on costume to help create them. Below are my initial ideas for the characters of the Giant, both young and old, Snow, Frost, Hail and the North Wind and the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. A lot of the colours were directly taken from my earlier work on the selfish giant as well as some of the concepts of the characters, such as Frost being inspired by a medieval jester.

After these designing these characters, I began working on the children who play in the giant’s garden. These characters were a bit more difficult to design because I couldn’t find a lot of research on what medieval children wore, they mainly seemed to have similar clothing styles to adults, so I just simplified a lot of the adult clothing and applied it to the designs. I wanted the children to have a range of ages and also be a mixture of peasants and nobility while still keeping them as playful children.

After finishing all of the design ideas, I re-worked some of the characters whose deigns I wasn’t too happy with, The Giant, the North Wind and Snow. I altered the deign of Snow the least, but really prefer the outcome to the first deign, while the North Wind was redesigned with more of a winter look, emphasising the fur more. I really liked the first design for the North Wind but felt it didn’t suit the character that much, so I decided to use it for the Giant instead because I liked it that much. I really enjoyed designing all of these characters and am really happy with the final outcome and I think all of the characters will remain as they are for the rest of the project, however there may be some tweaking further on. This work ha gotten me really excited for the rest of the project and I will continue to post more work as I make it.

The Selfish Giant: Costume Research and Design

After finishing the my first year project based on The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde, which can be seen here: https://scottkeenanillustration.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/first-year-the-selfish-giant-final-images/, I decided that as preparation for my third year, I would re-visit this project and almost ‘remake’ it. The medieval style I had used in this project and my TED project is something that I really want to explore more and develop and so my first starting point was to do some research on medieval costume so that I could then apply this to the design of the characters in my illustrations of the story. I used the following books as reference, ‘What People Wore When’ by Melissa Leventon and ‘The Anatomy of Costume’ by Robert Selbie. During my research, I produced some quick fine line sketches of costumes based on reference images from the two books, and then used pro marker pens and sharpies to get a small idea of applying colour to them.

After this, I began to develop ideas for the characters and their costumes which can been seen below.

First Year, The Selfish Giant: Final Images

For The Selfish Giant project, we had to create six illustrations for our finals as well as a cover page and end papers, below are my final pieces for the project. All of the images were drawn out with dip-pen and then painted with gouache and gold ink. I found the painting part of these finals very tricky because the images are quite small and detailed and it was hard painting in the smaller areas. Also, the sepia ink I had used for the outline would often run when it became wet so I had difficulty with the ink bleeding into the paint and ruining the outline, so I had to then re-do some of the outline with brown gouache.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the overall look of this project, even though I think that the finals look more inspired by stained glass windows than medieval manuscripts, but they are still effective in telling the story and exploring the style I was researching and experimenting with. I’m happy with the colours of the images, a lot of which was inspired by the manuscripts and illuminated pieces I had studied, but at the same time, they managed to be bright and colourful which I think created an interesting look. However I think the painting could be improved but as I stated earlier it was a rather tricky process and I have learned that the next time I wish to work with a dip-pen and paint, I should work a lot bigger and then scale down digitally. As a starting point for my third year, I will be re-doing this project and am hoping to achieve a look I am more satisfied with. I have already begun my research and created some development work for the project and I will post all of that soon.

First Year, The Selfish Giant: Character Designs

Here are my initial character designs for Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’. The characters include the giant, who I depicted as both young and slightly older before settling on a final design, Snow, Frost, Hail and the North Wind who keep the selfish giant’s garden from moving on from winter, The children who play in the giant’s garden, and the four seasons who I decided to make into characters and use in the end papers for the illustrations. All of these drawings were done using a dip-pen and sepia coloured ink. I used gouache and watercolour to apply the colour and it wanted them to be vibrant and colourful while still retaining the colours of the medieval manuscripts and illuminations I had looked at as part of my research. I’m not completely happy with all of the colours, some of them look uneven and ruin the rest of the image, however this was my first time colouring these characters and so it will obviously take some practice. I also was unsure whether or not to cover up the ink outlines with colour and detail, but eventually decided not to cover the lines because it liked the way they looked with the different gouache colours.