Visual application

 For this project we were required to do a minimum of two Vignettes- fully rendered. I hoped to do more than two but I was very experimental with the ones I have done and so it took a bit longer.  Vignette 1 (from page 1): This was a very difficult painting to do, completed in photoshop. A lot of different figures and poses and a lot of action. I have tried to make these seem like they have been painted in oils because of the time period- most of the existing paintings of Louis are oils because that's what was done at that time, I like this authentic approach. Ive used effects in photoshop to get that oil painted feeling, which although is effective, I think would have been nice to have done this traditionally instead for a more natural feel and to get even more different textures. Before printing I will also blur the edges a little better on here as its a bit messy at the moment.  I have taken inspiration from Vincent Van Gough to get that really textured and dynamic sky...

 Here are my final 4 pages for my folded format Page 13:  At this point in the story the tone begins to shift as Louis XIV becomes more paranoid and his conscience weighs more and more heavily on him. I hope the shift of tone is apparent but not too abrupt as to disturb the flow of the story. David suggested that I add a more solid black just outside Louis's head just to make sure there is a clearer separation of line work and the messy background. I have yet to make this change but hope to do so if I get enough time.  Page 14:  People were not very happy with Louis at this time in France; since the start of his reign France had many ups and downs but towards the end where we are in the story now France was in ruins. Ive remembered some earlier feedback I received on another page and applied it to this one making the hands etc in the foreground darker than the images in the back to bring them forward, I hope this is effective.  Page 15:  Louis is on his dea...

 We did a workshop with Molly where we tried out two types of book binding.  Saddle stitch and Japanese cross stitch. To be honest, I wasn't that good at this! It was quite fiddly and I need more practice but this workshop got us really thinking about bookbinding in a practical sense. Although I don't think Ill choose either of these types for my final folded format, it was good to learn about different types of bookbinding. 

 We did a really fascinating workshop trying out water marbling! Here is the work that I produced.  This was super fun and a really cool way of creating effects. You could make some really cool backgrounds with this technique. There's a couple that I produced here that have a really cool outcome. I wish I had created even more in the time we were given.

 I have now done 3/4 of the line work for my folded format! Here are the latest pages that I have completed.  Page 9:  More architecture! My plan for the story has really pushed my ability further and taken me out of my comfort zone but its very worth it as I am learning more from this than I have ever done and making great progress as an artist. The suggestions that have been made are to Darken the hand holding the torch to bring that more to the foreground and to obscure the building more where the smoke and flames are as a more effective way of showing this. This is the first iteration before I made these changes And here is the final version after taking this criticism on board , I think its an effective change!  Page 10:  This page is an interesting one. There have been no suggested changes when I asked for feedback but I'm not sure how happy I am with it. It feels a little off in terms of the style, but perhaps its only me who sees this. The sign would say...

 I am back on my blog to share my progress on pages 5-8 out of 16!  Page 5: Page 5 is the most detailed page I have created so far, this is because It is an establishing shot and will hopefully give the viewer a good feel for the setting. I have asked for feedback once again on all of these pages. For this page I received feedback from David that It would be good if there was more detail on the shutters of the windows, to make it clearer that they are shutters. Here is the original iteration:  I have attempted to make the changes suggested however, I think I need to do even more, so I may return to this page and try to implement the changes a little better but here is what the final outcome currently looks like:  I haven't received feedback on this yet and so I am not sure what my tutors think to the changes. Page 6:  This might be my favourite page so far, I love the style I have chosen and I think its really effective , however I worry that it does not quite d...

 I have now begun to illustrate my pages of which there will be 16 in total . Most of the pages will be line work and not fully painted, this is for time purposes, but its ok because Dummy books are not finished books, so as long as the story is coherent and the illustrations are neat and readable, it will fit our brief.  Page 1:  This page is going to be one of my vignettes and so for that reason it is not clean line work and ive started to add colour. I will be fully painting this and publishing the final on an upcoming blog post. As you can see in the current illustration, some of the characters look identical but duplicated , the reason for this is for time saving purposes but in the final iteration they will have been tweaked as to not look like they have been duplicated. As far as i understand, a lot of professionals use similar processes to save time. The reason the edges are not straight is because in the final dummy book I am going to be printing the illustration...