sebastian's sink city

I am just about ready to submit the second set of artworks for assessment to the London Art College's correspondence course D6 Illustrating Children's Books.

Of the set, the second part is a major project, a double page spread.

The brief went something like this: Allow for a text area taking up about 1/3 of the left hand page. Sebastian is seen to either build or find an imaginary world under the kitchen sink. Make it detailed with a cartoony edge, and use good contrasts of scale. Allow a 30mm border between the trimmed edge of the page and the start of the text. The text was not supplied.

​Here's the layout idea from my sketchbook:

And my pencil roughs:

The next part was to add the ink. 

And then add a bit more ink, increasing the lights and darks and adding more detail.

Next I took some photocopies, and used coloured pencils to test my colour arrangement ideas.

It seemed like having minimum colour on Sebastian made for a better flow from text area to city, and made the city the feature of the double page spread.

Now to begin the watercolour work. Masking fluid first. For this part it was easier to take photos rather than scans. I started with the browns and beiges.

Then came some blues and greens.

Followed by yellows and reds.

Then some skin tones on Sebastian, and fine tonal detail. The little people still need colour.

Here's the final raw artwork, with the bleed area still present.

Now to stitch it together with Photoshop and remove a few minor blemishes.

And what it would look like with the 5mm bleed removed, in a picture book.

And lastly, how a bit of text would look. 

I'm very pleased that this project is finished. I enjoyed it, but it took a lot of work to complete.