Grief

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Jess Claxton

When it came to drawing my story I found it particularly difficult to draw certain parts, for example the forest, so I thought it might be simpler if it focused more on the rabbits feelings rather than trying to explain his feelings through him getting lost in the woods during a storm. I wanted the story to be fairly straightforward so that young children could easily understand what was happening.

I wanted to find out more about how people feel after the death of a loved one so I researched into this and came across the 5 stages of grief. These are:

1) Denial and isolation

2) Anger

3) Bargaining

4) Depression

5) Acceptance

I thought that it might be interesting represent these stages in the book as it would help children learn that it is okay is feel any of these ways after someones death. Therefore I will incorporate these five stages into my story, ending on the acceptance, giving the story a happy ending.

Ideas

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Jess Claxton

Although I had moved on from the original story idea that I had, I still wanted to keep it on the topic of death. I got some inspiration from this illustration from Duncan Beedie, which I posted in this post.

I thought that it might be interesting to use animals rather than human characters, it would also be easier for me to illustrate. I came up with a simple story line that focused on two rabbits, one of them dies and it sees the other one becoming lost in the woods during a storm, which links back to my original idea. The story would resolve with the rabbit finding his way out of the woods where it is sunny again and full of colour.

I wanted the characters to look cute so the children liked them but I wasn’t sure at all how to draw them. I googled illustrated rabbits and found various images but many of them were incredibly detailed and far more complicated than I would ever be able to draw. I then found this website. I liked the simplistic way that the rabbits were drawn and wanted to see if I could use a similar style in my illustrations, although I would like to draw the rabbits so that they are recognizable as individual characters, so there must be something different about each rabbit.

I drew out (half) a storyboard to plan out the illustrations that I wanted for my book.

From here I could then start drawing the real illustrations that I would use for my book.

Initial Story Ideas

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Jess Claxton

Firstly I tried to come up with a story for my book and then develop the illustrations from there. I found it quite difficult to come up with an actual story. I had parts of a storyline that I wanted to incorporate but did not know how to put this into a full plot. Initially, I wanted to write a story around inequality but eventually decided against this and focused on the topic of death and grief.

My first idea was to focus on a young girl with her parents. One of the girls parents would pass away and she would be followed around by a dark storm cloud, indicating her sadness. However, as the story progresses the cloud starts to disappear and it eventually passes, showing her becoming happy again.

These were my original notes for writing my story:

Beginning

Happy family – shows them doing things together

Middle

Her dad dies. She is shown doing all the activities she’d do with her dad but she is followed around by a rain cloud

End

The rain cloud starts to disappear and everything becomes brighter and colourful again.

This is the main character that I had drawn.

I found it quite difficult to draw people and ended up moving on from this idea, although I am not entirely sure why as I quite like it.

Researching children’s books

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Jess Claxton

I don’t particularly have much interaction with children’s books anymore, so I did not know a huge amount going into this project so I thought that it was best to research them thoroughly before I began.

I started by looking at a few children’s books that I remember from my childhood.

I wanted to do a children’s book that involved fairly simple illustrations as I like these style of drawings, and I can’t draw so they would be easier for me to do.

I also looked into different illustrators that I liked that followed the simple style that I wanted to use.

Alexandra Ball

I liked this style of illustrations as they are fairly simple but they feature various textures that make them more interesting.

Duncan Beedie

Again, I liked the simplicity of these illustrations and feel that these are something that I could use in my own.

(this particular image was the one that gave me my inspiration for my story)

Xiao Xin

I liked the use of colours in a few of these illustrations.

Project 4

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Jess Claxton

The fourth project is design and make an illustrated children’s book that deals with a difficult topic, for example death, conflict, anger or inequality. The book has to be suitable for children of my chosen age range, but must be between three and eleven. I must choose the dimensions and format of the book, the topic, the style of illustrations and the balance between text and image.

My initial thoughts on this project was to base my story around inequality, as I thought that this would be easy to illustrate, although I am unsure of a storyline.