Mansfield Park Illustration
Illustration completed for university. Brief was to create an illustration for the book Mansfield Park, with focus on composition and technical ability. The course leaders were keen for students to be conceptual as opposed to figurative; to visually communicate our chosen section without illustrating a scene from the book. We were encouraged to use visual metaphors, symbolism and colour to push feeling into our work.
This was a long project, I chose to work in watercolour, which required weeks of planning for a piece of this size ((A3)). The final piece was completed in A3 so that it could be shrunk down without loosing detail. As always, the issue I perpetually run into is uploading the finished traditional image onto the computer as the university scanners are hopeless, however I plan to photograph this piece properly to reflect the subtle colours.
Final internal book illustration for Mansfield Park
initial design stages
really fuzzy example of thumbnailing process
final composition plan
example of coloured thumbnail
demonstration of how I layer and build an illustration traditionally
the reference
collection of reference photos taken during the process and the reference drawings
the flower illustrations as seen on paper before transference to PS
all the hand rendered flowers collaged together
final design and layout completed
Final watercolour in progress
Post completion note: in future I would like to consider playing with radical tonal change to see what results could be achieved.
Post completion note: In future I intent to experiment with hues prior to painting the final piece so that I can achieve interesting colour results