I chose this image from one of my favourite picture books. I love Quentin Blake’s style and admire how he creates characters full of personality. I particularly love this image because it encapsulates the joy of drawing and creating and the unpredictability of art. There are no boundaries.
Context: A picture book about two angel girls, Corky and Loopy, who love to draw. They go to see Sid Bunkin, the pavement artist. They give him a special pencil that draws in the air, to save his images from being walked on or washed away by the rain. The angel girls fly Sid around the town as he draws in the air. He wins a special prize at the Big Drawing Competition. This illustration will accompany the final chunk of text in the picture book, where Sid is sitting on the floor but the images he draws still fly up in the air.
What content should be included? A pavement artist – Sid Bunkin – knelt on the floor drawing images for the onlooking angels, Corky and Loopy. The drawings are flying up in the air.
Connection between image and written content: The written content is ‘Up and up they went, all over town. It was extraordinary. But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?’
Drawing = the character needs to be drawing
Up and up = drawings above the characters
Extraordinary = drawings need to dominate the page and stand out; brighter colours, interesting images, filling the page
The role the image will perform: The image will extend the meaning of the text and, partially, decorate the page to add more interest for the reader. The illustration will capture the moment the character, Sid, is kneeling and drawing and his drawings are filling the air.
Colours and flavour: The colours should be subtler for the characters to contrast with more vivid colours for the fantasy elements, such as the angels’ wings (which we can only see because they are in the picture book) and the pavement artist’s drawings. The characters should be outlined with black ink expressive lines; these outlines will solidify reality.
Intended audience: Children or adults who are going to read the book to a younger audience (probably up to 7 or 8 years old).
Briefly indicate which stylistic aspects you admire: I love the multi-coloured drawings, which only use jagged lines and are flat, but life and movement is still achieved. Everything on the page looks alive. The style celebrates expressive art.
Describe the effects that you would like to see in the image, which aspects of distortion, and what use of tools and materials is appropriate to the idea: The eyes of the characters should be wide with wonder, looking up at the flying, multi-coloured drawings. The drawings should be bigger than the characters, so they dominate the page. Bright, thick, textured crayons or pencil colours should be used for the fantasy elements of the illustration to achieve a free, child-like drawing style. For the characters, water colours should be used to achieve subtle colours, and then black ink should be used to create expressive, jagged outlines that imply movement and life.
Reflections
It was interesting working backwards and picking apart the illustration to come up with a brief. Of course, being his own picture book, Blake may have written the story with the images already in mind, compared to scenarios where he is given someone else’s text to generate images for. I found it very important to establish the context of the image, especially as this is the final image to accompany the final chunk of text in the book. It was vital that the parting image captured the unpredictability and wonder of art. Also, the vivid colours needed to be used in this final image – the drawings dominate the page.
For this illustration, the connection between the image and the written content was probably the main area to explore. The illustration added meaning and exemplified the text, so I picked out specific words from the text and linked these to aspects of the finished illustration. This highlighted to me the importance of picking out key words and building ideas from these. For example, from just the word ‘extraordinary’, I picked out the bright colours (brighter than the ‘ordinary’ characters and the backdrop of reality), the size of the images (again, bigger than reality) and the fact that the drawings were unusual and out of the ordinary. This exercise has definitely helped me to carefully analyse and make links between a brief and an illustration.
Jade's OCA Learning Log 