Storybook ideas.

During the summer of last year, I wanted to sit down and think of what I wanted to do for my Final Major Project (It kept me a little more sane during the long period of doing nothing and being unemployed.

I looked back on my second year project I enjoyed the most- sequential narrative. Although I didn't get the strongest mark (a 64 I believe.) or really felt the overall project ever reached a finished stage or go beyond doodles and storyboards, I loved coming up with the ideas of what a story could be about. Heres some of my favourite drawings I came up with during the Summer break.

Queen of The bunnies. Its a drawing for a friends birthday who happens to love cute and cuddley bunnies. With that in mind, I drew this.

Its Been done before I'm sure of it, but why not Cowboys against something else rather than indians?

Based on the name of a friends band- wolves at night. I love the wolf character from the original red riding hood story just because I've seen dozens of different iterations of what the 'wolf' should look like. For my idea- its a band of wolves who play at night.

This is actually an image I made for my previous third year project where I needed to make some drawings for the original treasure Island story. I envisioned a 'sea-shell style' pirate ship. I really like the idea of making another pirate shiped themed image for this project (which I just haven't done yet.)

                                  

A sequel to the wolves at night perhaps? I drew a smaller version of it with a young damsel in distress, Wolves I would imagine have a bit of a keen interest in damsels.

                                    

As you may have noticed from all of my blog posts so far- everything is entirely black and white. I keep being advised that some of my drawings could really use some colour. Its not that I don't enjoy colouring in, its just that I have so many ideas, I'm already busy drawing the next one before I really get a chance to colour in my image.

Still trying to find a way I can 'enjoy' colouring in and I'm hoping I can include a few colour updates in future. For now though, I just simply started flicking through some older books which include colour imagery that I found appealing to me.

I liked the slightly 'faded' look to some of the older books I have in my libary. Its a difficult feeling to explain- I just happen to like how the actual paper fades a little bit over time? When I was younger I recal taking a bit of a disliking to comics that were loud and colourful and in your face- I would have much more enjoyed things like the original barbar illustrations (above)- too bad I instead passed on the books and watched the animated cartoon series instead!

A image I found from one of Richard Scarrys books. I really love how you can see the brush strokes in all of his work, but I don't seem to neccesarily enjoy using paints and paintbrushes.

I was brought up reading french (or belgian?) Comics such as Asterix and TinTin, but theres still a great deal of them I've completely missed- I had no idea comics such as Lucky Luke were translated into english. I've noticed theres quite a mix of european comics in a lot of the second hand book stores I visit in Southampton- like the one above. Superb drawings and has the same sort of colour layout to the stuff I grew up on- too bad I can't read it!