Picture Book - Page 1, end pages and transition page

Page 1

This first page took me quite a while to get my head around - I had drawn my outline and the knitted pattern on separate pieces of paper and I needed to somehow bring them together using layers but I wasn't very confident with this. I eventually figured this out using the notes from the previous workshops we had. 

Problem: A problem I had was the sizing of the image because I had not not drawn my images to the actual scale, I had just made sure they were bigger than the pages of my book so I wasn't lowering the resolution by having to enlarge them. 

Problem Solving: When I had my image how I wanted it, I copied and pasted the section that I wanted and copied and resized it onto a new page where I had set up the correct page measurements. This was a long way round of doing this so from now on I will copy my images directly into a page with the correct dimensions. 

I was exploring the different layer types to try and change the colour of the jumper and I ended up using a colour layer to make it a warm rusty orange colour. I felt that this would fit in with my proposed colour scheme for the book. Drawing hands is a weakness of mine, I find it very challenging so I worked from reference for this drawing and to pick up the areas of shadow. 

End Pages

I wanted something subtle for the insides of my cover and not too distracting from the rest of the book. Because my book starts of just about tea and then progresses into the story behind it, I didn't want to give away the story of the book by including anything about trafficking on the first page. After doing some roughs, I decided to take imagery from my sketches done at Swiss Cottage Antiques and arrange these into a composition which would span two pages. I am going to paint this in ink and then make it look more grey and washed out on Photoshop using levels. 

Original scan

After Photoshop

Transition (pages 4 and 5)

At this stage I am becoming more comfortable with using layers so I am drawing a lot of my images on separate pieces of paper, scanning them and arranging them together on photoshop. I am learning new skills as a I go along, for example I learnt how to place a guide in a specific position; I placed it exactly at half way so I knew where the fold line would be. 

I am using the wacom tablet a lot more now as I am finding it easier than the mouse. The tablet was particularly useful in drawing the faded spiral in the tea to show that it had just been stirred because this would have been hard to keep control of using the mouse.