Filed under: FUTURE WORK, SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Angela Carter, Art, Cat, Competition, Design, Drawing, Fairy Tales, Folio Society, House of Illustration, Illustration, Lily, Literature, Little Red Riding Hood, Painting, Puss In Boots, The Bloody Chamber, Wolves
First drawings and paint sketches for ‘The Bloody Chamber’ illustration competition. Tricky combining the scene, mood and character designs together into one image for each story but so far we have…
The Bloody Chamber (Bluebeard):
Puss-In-Boots:
The Company of Wolves (Little Red Riding Hood):
Filed under: FUTURE WORK, SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, Birds, Calm, Countryside, Drawing, Feathers, Flow, Harmony, Illustration, Mood, Nature, Painting, Pattern, Peacock, Peacock Feathers
Sketch for new peacock painting, it’s tricky to try and think about mood and themes for such a simple subject…
Think I’m going to try and concentrate on the patterns, textures and shapes rather than any grand concept, although I would like it to have a calm, flowing and harmonious feel to it. Not totally sure on the background and colours yet, that will be tomorrow’s experimenting job!
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Design, Dragons, Drawing, Illustration, Tattoo Designs, Tattoos, Wales
This is a project doing a tattoo design for a friend which I shamefully have been doing on and (very) off for several months, however finding myself with no more uni work distractions, I can finally get round to doing these little things that have been in the pipeline for a while. Anyway the plan was to develop the last design of these which you can see in October’s post: http://sarahkirk.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/a-little-dragon-distraction/ into a few more variations:
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: A Thousand Splendid Suns, Afghanistan Suns, Art, Book Covers, Design, Drawing, Illustration, Khaled Hosseini, Literature, Mountains, Novels, Painting, Typography
Just been tweaking the main design around a bit, I think that this is a softer and more fitting type and I think that the brown textured paper in the background brings the image together and hopefully gives a feeling of domesticity as well as something which is worn and slightly distressed. It’s been tricky sorting out the back and the spine (how do you design these?! I always find them so awkward to get right) but this is a little better for now, when I’m back at uni I’ll have to fine tune all my 3 covers so they are super polished (I wish!)
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: A Thousand Splendid Suns, Afghanistan, Art, Book Covers, Desert, Drawing, Fiction, Illustration, Khaled Hosseini, Literature, Mountains, Novels, Painting
Aaand finally, on to the last novel that I’m book cover-ing. Again, sticking with the ‘isolated landscape’ concept, but as this book is very much about a touching relationship between two women in Afghanistan, I thought there should be a bit more relationship in this one. My main idea is to have the 2 main characters Mariam and Laila integrated within the dry mountainous landscape, showing how they are negatively trapped in their culture, but also how they are positively intrinsically bonded to each other. I wanted the text to be a bit bold and imposing as a contrast but I’m not sure about it. Also not sure about the plain white background:
And below is my more simple idea about a deserted desert town, I’m quite pleased with the look of the drawing but I don’t think it encapsulates my idea so well:
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, Authors, Cornwall, Countryside, Daphne Du Maurier, Drawing, Fiction, Gothic Literature, Illustration, Landscape, Manderley, Novels, Painting, Rebecca
Almost finished book covers for Rebecca… still going for the lonely, eerie isolation atmosphere, and I wanted to have an obvious mix of traditional and contemporary. The first one just needs a bit of tweaking and then it’s finished!
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, Book Covers, Book Jackets, Countryside, Daphne Du Maurier, Design, Drawing, Flowers, Gothic Literature, Illustration, Ink, Literature, Manderley, Nature, Novels, Pencil, Rebecca, Woods
Started on book number 2, the classic Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. For this one, I would like to keep the same sort of feeling of loneliness and isolation, using traditional English countryside imagery but using a modern style. These covers below are a bit of a failed attempt at conveying what I want to do as they look a bit twee, but they are ok in terms of composition and imagery. The black ink and white paint image at the bottom has the kind of look I would like to use for the covers.
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, Columbia, Competition, Design, Drawing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Illustration, Isolation, Literature, Loneliness, Magic Realism, Novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Painting, Penguin, Typography, Waxed Palm Tree
Going back to the simple design, I have tried to make these final cover versions very spacious and airy to emphasise the lonely and isolated feel. Nearly finished! Just need a few little tweaks and then one of these will be winging its way to the Penguin design competition submissions folder:
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, Book Covers, Book Jackets, Drawing, Fiction, Fish, Flying Carpets, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Illustration, Literature, Magic Realism, Novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Painting, Penguin, Scrolls, Writing
So I really really need to crack these book jackets now the BBC and the Self Promo projects are both out of the way, so here is my progress on it all so far…
This work stems from a previous design, I wanted to jazz it up basically and make the cover look busier and more rich with themes and imagery. I think it is a bit too much, but here it is nonetheless:
Filed under: SKETCHES & DEVELOPMENT | Tags: Art, BBC, Broadcasting, Cogs, Competition, Design, Digital, Fibre Optics, Illustration, Logo, Particles, Screens, Speakers, W1
Quite excited to get through onto the shortlist to do a commission for the BBC which involves designing branding for the move into their brand new Broadcasting House off Regent Street. As the brief was quite loose and interpretive, I decided to concentrate mostly on the idea of things flowing and coming together, such as particles and broadcasting signals… These are my main 3 idea roughs:
