A Serious Question - Children's Book Illustration

The third class I took this quarter was Children's Book illustration.

Due to time constraints, I had to choose a story/verse from the public domain instead of writing my own. I chose "A Serious Question" by Carolyn Wells. It is as follows:

A kitten went a-walking
One morning in July,
And idly fell a-talking
With a great big butterfly.

The kitten's tone was airy,
The butterfly would scoff;
When there came along a fairy
Who whisked his wings right off.

And then--for it is written
Fairies can do such things--
Upon the startled kitten
She stuck the yellow wings.

The kitten felt a quiver,
She rose into the air,
Then flew down to the river
To view her image there.

With fear her heart was smitten,
And she began to cry,
"Am I a butter-kitten?
Or just a kitten-fly?"

We were required to create three pages of illustrations for the book. I chose 3 spreads (6 pages). Here is my favourite spread out of the ones I drew:

(Click to view larger.)

The medium is graphite and digital.

I'm happy I've gotten to experiment so much with this technique this quarter. After 3 years at SCAD, I'm finally starting to feel like this can be MY technique. I've liked many through the years but never had the one that was quite right for me, until now. I've noticed the most successful students are the ones that pick one and stick with it. We all learn at least two dozen techniques here but picking just the right one for you and developing it seems to be the most rewarding approach. Your work gains consistency and you are quickly able to identify what's working and what isn't and if so, how to fix it.

The best part about it is it can be done either in paint or digitally. Due to the volume of work I had this quarter, most of it was digital, since it's faster that way.

The sad part is I really enjoy painting but painting only constitutes about 10-20% of the work in this technique. It's all mostly in the drawing, really.

Either way, I'm really happy with the results of using it all quarter. I've never been more consistently pleased with my work.  :)

Illustration ©Tatiana Dengo 2010.