AYEISHA MUIR ILLUSTRATION
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-  THE NIGHTINGALE  -
The Brief: To create at least one interior illustration and a cover at A4 scale for "The Nightingale" written by Hans Christian Andersen.
- This project was designed to be a side project that ran alongside "The Dream Weaver" main project. As such it is a smaller and less in depth project -
Research
The Nightingale Script
Fabric Book Covers
Children's Book Covers 1871 - 1925
For the front cover of this book I knew that I wanted it to be fabric with metallic additions, therefore researching this era of book covers was very helpful.
Chinese Fabrics

I decided to research Chinese fabrics as inspiration for the colour palette of this projects illustrations. As I like the jewel toned quality of the colours.
Previous Versions of "The Nightingale"

Here are some examples of illustrations from previous versions of "The Nightingale", I enjoy the colour use in each of these illustrations, however the right image is by far my favourite.
Thumbnails

Initially to start the Nightingale project I created some very quick thumbnails these were created with a black pen and some colour.
​This just gave me a run this gave me a rough idea of what kind of concept I was going for and in turn I was able to pick a design to move forward with.

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Coloured Thumbnails

I'm always partial to some expressive watercolour paintings as thumbnails, these thumbnails may not make sense to anyone else.
​However I was using them to look at tone, colour and composition in a way that was fast but also very informative to me in my own process.

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Development

Here you can see me getting an idea of style and the feel that I wanted to go for within these illustrations.
​I then moved on to sketching a more finite version of the designs including a cover and 4 interior spreads
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​Style Testing

Here I was experimenting with pencil and water colour overlaid digitally, I am still looking out for anyway I can combine digital and traditional so I have
more movement and changeable options within my practice. However I didn't like this style as much as I thought I would, I'm still attached to the
​spontaneity of watercolour and I don't feel but I can get that within Photoshop or any other digital software.
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The Nightingale

This is a painting of a Nightingale and some patterns, pattern is very important within Chinese culture and I wanted to include this somehow.
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Sketched Designs

Here are the illustrations that I ended up sketching out as you can see I have a cover and three interior pages as
​I found that the fourth didn't work and I would have to go back and develop more for that to be pursued.

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Final Outcomes

These are the outcomes of this project one cover and one interior page ideally I would have liked to do more. However this is a miniature project and the aim was always to do what I could just so I could escape and put my brain on something else for a little bit of time. I am quite pleased with how these designs turned out I always like gold and fabric on covers. I also found it I also found it interesting to draw a pose where a man was looking through a magnifying glass because it is a difficult pose to do and I don't think I've got it perfectly. But there's always time next time as I feel in my future I will actually come back to this project and build upon what I have. 
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  • Home
  • Illustration
    • Environmental Illustration
    • University Illustration Gallery
  • University
    • First Year >
      • Introducing Visual Communication
      • History and Practice
      • Multi Dimensional Illustration
      • Visual Problem Solving
    • Second Year >
      • Drawing
      • The Illustrator's Toolkit
      • Illustration Projects
      • The Critical Illustrator
    • Third Year >
      • Advanced Illustration Projects
      • The Independent Research Paper
      • Illustration Showcase
  • About
  • Contact
  • Instagram