Children's Book

Watercolor Illustration

Brief

Recreate a portion of a children’s book spread using watercolor and dip pen.

Process

I selected a children’s book with a style and subject I liked; Clara by Emily Arnold McCully. From the book I picked three spreads that I thought were most visually interesting and scanned them. From there I started with a print out and used iron oxide to trace the composition of the original into my sketchbook. I then inked this with dip pen and printed out a copy of the original spread on Lustre 260 paper to use for color matching. After a critique from my peers, I repeated this process but with all three spreads. My peers voted on which spread was most successful and I repeated the process one more time.

Iron Oxide Process

Inking Process

Original Spread 1
Spread 1 Attempt
Original Spead 2
Spread 2 Attempt
Spread 3
Spread 3 Attempt
Final Recreation

bessettedesign ©️2022