Final Piece

For my final piece, I have wrote and illustrated a children's book which explains the feelings and affects of depression to children and adults. I wanted to do this as many people struggle to understand mental illnesses and how hard it can be to deal with them.

Below are the pages of my children's book which I have illustrated. My book has 26 pages, I have not included all of the pages in this blog post but they are being shown at my school's exhibition.

I created these illustrations by printing the pages of my book which I wanted to illustrate, and then I did mono-printing onto them.

Page 2

Page 3

Page 5

Page 8

Page 10

Page 14

Page 17

Page 18

Page 25

Final Piece: Plan

This is a plan for my children's book and what is going to be on each page, whether it be just text, or text and illustration. 

Experimentation: Mono-Printing and Layout

After looking at other layout's in children's books from the previous blog post, I decided to experiment further with mono-printing and the layout of my children's book. I printed out Page 5 and Page 8 of my book and also my primary images of my bedroom and myself to create mono-prints of the primary images onto the pages of my book. Here are the scans from this:

Research: Layout and Typography in other Children's books

For my final piece, I am making a few pages for my children's book. At the moment, I am unsure of the layout, placement and typography. This blog post is researching into other children's books and how they have used layout, placement and typography.

Custard and The Thing

The Lady and the Tramp

Lotsa de Casha

Lotsa de Casha

Lotsa de Casha

Lotsa de Casha

The Wind in the Willows

The Magic Faraway Tree

The Tigger Movie

Experimentation: Mono-Printing

These are mono-prints which I have done using my primary images in the previous blog post. I have done these to experiment with the process further to help to make my decision of which process which would be best to use for my final piece.

Primary Images: Bedroom and Subject

These are my primary images of a bedroom and myself grabbing my stomach. These images will be used for developing my final piece.

Plan for Final Piece

Below is a photograph of a brainstorm I did to show how I am going to move forward and develop my final piece. I will also be experimenting with mono-printing further, which is not added in the brainstorm, but this is to see which process will work best for my final piece.

Experimentation: Mono-Printing

I have experimented with mono-printing further by using my primary images of chairs and children's toys to create different compositions and designs for my children's illustration. I am really drawn to mono-printing as the effect and presentation that it has links to the theme (depression) of my children's book very successfully.

Most Successful

I think that the last mono-print is the most successful as it represents the theme (depression, loneliness) and it relates to the target audience (children and parents). The simple chair and teddy bear composition is very effective and not too ''in-your-face''. I like the effect that the mono-printing has given it and the roughness around the teddy bear which creates a very gritty look to it.

My mono-prints have improved a vast amount since the first time I started experimenting with them last month. To improve them further I am going to re-create the most successful mono-print and add text; I will be doing this in the style of Edward Gorey.