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17th August 2017 in Categories Ilustration 1
The first part of this exercise was to research age specific children’s illustration. I found the best way to do this was through searches on Amazon as there the books are organised according to age range. However, after only a couple of searches it was clear that age ranges aren’t firm as some books appeared in multiple categories. There are a number of reasons for this crossover:
Reading age is not always the same as actual age. Actually it often isn’t.
Some books may be enjoyed by pre-readers by being read to and still enjoy the book as an early reader.
Second language children may read books from earlier age groups.
The images below show the book cover illustrations I collected for each age group:
So I mindmapped out for 2 groups:
Pre-school – Frog & Wild
Established reader – Wolf & Journey
(mindmaps below)
After making some thumbnails and deciding on a simple image I made some moodboards for each illustration (above). For the pre-school children I think forest schools are a fairly ‘wild’ adventure. So I decided to show a dark forest and to keep it not too scary by having the characters toasting marshmallows. I was very conscious in preparing these images about not making them too clean so I opted for a traditional approach. I kept the shapes simple and showed bark texture by scraping into paint. I think the frog could be anthropomorphised further.
For the established readers I felt the animal should not be anthropomorphised and opted for a more stylised wolf to keep with the patterned landscape. The wolf rendering could be improved.
Wild & Frog
Journey & Wolf
Books for children have not always been illustrated with bright colours as can be seen from these examples of older books below:
Many examples of current and contemporary illustrations for children are given in the Bologna book fair annual. I selected a number that show a lack of bright colours:
It is not clear from my references what age the example illustrations are aimed at. However, they do show illustrations that are appealing and engaging. I do not think bright colours are essential in all children’s illustration but I do think they help for the youngest children and as an eye catching device (e.g. on a cover or cereal box).
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Currently only dispatching to U.K. addresses. Sorry for the inconvenience. Ceri xx
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