Hannah Oakley Illustrations: February 2015

Friday, 27 February 2015

Folio Society 2015: The Folio Collection of Ghost Stories

"Each year entrants are asked to submit three illustrations [if you are to the enter the competition. I did not enter the competition and therefore I only had to produce two illustrations and a binding design for my university course] and a binding design for a book chosen by The Folio Society."

‘The Upper Berth’ by F. Marion Crawford

‘A Tale of an Empty House’ by E. F. Benson

Back-Spine-Front Binding Design
(Text positioning, not actual typography)

Back-Spine-Front Binding Design with print details

Water patterns for The Upper Berth

Sand Patterns for A Tale of an Empty House

Pattern on the left used in the cover design for the collection

Mediums Used: Sharpie for the patterns; paint for the textures and Photoshop to construct the images together.

Thursday, 19 February 2015

The Company of Wolves: Folio Society

In preparation for the 2015 Folio Society competition we looked at the 2014 brief which used The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter and we had to complete one of the finals. I incorporated the pure and white as snow girl figure with her blood red cape, the howling wolves and house at which the events take place.
Originally the piece was just in the varied whites, but to tie it all together and refer to the coming of age themes of the story I included the red cape which carries down into the red window where the scene in the book is actually set.

Company of Wolves Final: Papercutting

For this papercutting piece I used a variety of different white papers and cards, whether that was tonally or texture. I also painted snowflakes onto the white paper to signify the snow white of the girls hair merging with the snow actually swirling around the house. Each snowflake is constructed of small wolf prints.

Crowd: Comic Book Convention

Moving on from the portraiture project we were each given a scenario to incorporate twelve of our characters into. I did end up using a few of my summer project characters, but I also found myself creating a few new ones.

My scenario was a crowd at a comic book convention. I therefore played upon the idea of cosplay, but rather than just having people dressed up as the comic book character, I wanted a clear indicator that they were simply impersonating that hero rather than being them. For example, Wolverine's claws are sporks; Spiderman's webs are silly-string and Groot has tied branches to himself rather than actually being tree.

The layout was influenced by comic book layouts and I tried to use a variety of bold colours and dramatic lines, which however, do not confine the characters, but just give them their placement.

A3 Print Poster

Character sketches

I constructed the poster after I had individually drawn each character and coloured them. It made it easier to focus on detail and then easily combine them into one poster.

Mediums Used: photoshop and drawing tablet.

Born Free: Birds & Cages

Born Free was a project based on the quote by William Blake,

"How can the bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing?"

I had to design a thaumatrope which had a overlying design for both the bird and the cage and then follow through with this to create an A3 poster design. It was a decorative piece using different types of lines and patterns.

A3 Print: Born Free Poster

Thaumatrope: Cage

Thaumatrope: Bird

Original Bird Painting

Drawn Poster Plan

The bird I used within my A3 poster was originally the same colours as those on my thaumatrope, but due to tonal issues and directing the focus, I adjusted the colours in photoshop.

Mediums used: THAUMATROPE: gouache and watercolour for the painting and fine liner. POSTER: photoshop and drawing tablet.

What's the Word? : Portrait Project

A long overdue update from the summer portraiture work. This project involved a list of words which I had to illustrate; trying to use different artist and illustrator influences for each. It was a good experiment to try out different styles and be creative with the words.