Surprise Monday : Week 10 : Collage

Well I'm getting to the point where it's difficult to show you very much! I'm trying to stick to the illos I've already showed you the sketch of.

This one takes place in the kitchen scene, and I showed you how I came up with one of the kitchen sketches here. I've been having lots and lots of fun with collage and I feel like it's really adding a new dimension to the book. I am using it as little accents in a scene, and don't want it to overpower the characters.

So what I'm doing is sticking down a bit of patterned paper using craft glue, and then painting on top of it with acrylics. I use Titanium white to partially obscure the paper so it doesn't stand out too much, (and actually I realise you can't see the collage much at all in this scan!) - but then on top of that I use this "mixing white" that I talked about in an earlier post.

I mix the "mixing white" with whatever colour I need to blend it with (in this case, Lemon Yellow) and because the white is so transparent, it's like painting a 'wash' over the paper! It's really cool! and I think it helps blend the collage in with the rest of the painting, so it doesn't just jump out as 'oh, there's a bit of paper stuck on there.' I'm having a lot of fun with it and I think it's now one of my favourite parts!!

I'm pretty much on track with all the illos and they are going well. I've been focusing on all the spot illustrations, and soon will start on the double page spreads. It's very satisfying to see my little folder of final illustrations growing. wohoo!

Thanks again for checking in everybody, your encouragement is much appreciated! :)