I don’t know! Okay that’s not true, but sometimes the brain doesn’t work. An average course level for a semester is 5 classes, and I’m taking 4 since I was able to get credit for my internship. Which I’m super grateful for because it’s a lot to handle in a pandemic, in classes where it requires a lot more motivation and a new way of doing things, on top of also keeping apartment and yourself clean and fed. Two of my classes are for Thesis, one is my 400 level class Eating and the Environment, and then my elective is Watercolor.
Watercolor
For every project we start off with basic small thumbnail drawings or loose sketches, and in Watercolor we usually start off with a value sketch.
With children’s books I know that authors can start the book process with the story/plot, or even just one image they then build off.
I had the general idea of what might happen in the story- some images of what I might draw, but then I needed to write the story before any real planning. With picture books it doesn’t make sense to do one drawing and then plan the next. You have to plan the whole book, progressing as a whole for it to look cohesive at the end. Or maybe you don’t. But I do.
But the text and the images play a huge role together, so I needed the base of the story before I translated it to visuals.
This was an assignment where we had to do a monochrome macro and micro version of a still life with strong lighting, so I chose my window sill with some plants, a rock salt lamp, and a little 3D printed BMO.
And then we had to choose one of them to do in full color, (doing a little color study in my sketchbook) and then the final, which I was quite happy with how it turned out!
Our next assignment is an interior/exterior, with the piece showing a little of both and I did six thumbnail options for it. Then cleaner lines, and a digital color study before transferring the line art to watercolor paper.
Thesis
In simplest terms, for Illustration Thesis we create a body of work with a theme and topics to research to deepen the meaning of our pieces. And at the end of the semester we create a book that captures the process. So you could create eight paintings and that’s your thesis. Mine is a picture book, so I have a narrative that the pieces need to tie to. It’s about a witch who falls in love, and how love is a type of magic on its own.
Some authors start the book process with one drawing idea that they can build a story around, or they have the story vaguely planned out. For me I had the general idea of what could happen, with a few visuals in mind.
It’s not like I could just finish an entire piece and then start the next one and hope they all seemed cohesive. So it was important for me to write out the plot before I planned the whole project though. Once the text was done I could figure out how it was laid out on the page and how the image related to it. The visuals and text play an important role together.
This sketchbook page for example, I wanted the image to show the two girls dancing sweetly in the kitchen, sun streaming in. And the feedback I got from my class was that #2 was their favorite because it was very intimate.
I took the first page of the book’s drawing that I had sketched out, put some colors under it to capture the vibe but then the next step was to clean it up and make it cleaner with more detail in a color study below.
Thank you for reading this far! I hope October is treating you well. It’s my favorite month right now.
Fall I love you <3