about story illustration

[astridv]

Looking at the art of Ivan Bilibin I feeling inspired. I was experimenting with a more decorative style of illustration in art school and I felt it was really up my alley, just it never fits with the projects I work on so I lost sight of it over the years.

But I really want to try to experiment with my style more. I don't want my art to grow stale.
I scanned a few pages from the days of yore... here are two of the illustrations for The Jungle Books I made for illustration class:




eta: Huh, I've almost forgotten about this one, a linocut version of one of the pages:


This one was for a job, an illustrated bible I did in 2000:

The rights for the bible illustrations fell back to me since the book went out of print, and I've been meaning to do something with them - after all, there's no copyright on the story so I'd have all the freedom to re-use the art. Though it would involve re-drawing the illos since the originals mysteriously disappeared.

And while I'm being nostalgic... here's a color sketch of the first few panels of the first comic I ever drew, back in '94 I believe. It was an adaptation of my favorite YA novel, and I was in way over my head. I got eleven pages in before I had to give up and move on to something more practical. I had only a vague concept of comic art so I just went ahead and translated the prose into comic 1:1 with no regard for pacing or storytelling in general. It was an excellent way to learn what not to do. I still look back at the experience fondly. :)


Preview:

Comments

[ratcreature]

I like the Jungle Book illustration style, especially how the foliage and grass works as a frame in the first one, though I think I'd prefer a more dynamic line width instead of just the uniform thin lines.

[astridv]

You're absolutely right. Our (otherwise fantastic) professor was married to rapidograph pens and it took most of us a while to realize how unsuitable they are for illustration. Actually I started to experiment with the line - I'd almost forgotten about it, but I have turned one of the Jungle Books designs into a Linoleum cut:


Been meaning to color that one for ten years... ;)

I don't think I'll pursue the linoleum technique much further because it's such a pain in the ass, both the cutting and the printing, but the overall effect is really interesting and I should look into doing something like that with just ink.

[ratcreature]

I think the main advantage of lino and woodcuts rather than doing similar things with ink (or scratch board techniques for a similar cutting tool look) is that you end up with limited print runs to sell rather than just having one original.

[sholio]

It's fun to see these different styles! :D I've always really enjoyed illustration that plays with page boundaries, as the Jungle Book illustrations do. (And that was your first comic?! Even though you've obviously come a long way, you started out with some pretty good skills!)

[astridv]

Yeah, I like that play with the illustration frame too, and I still use it when suitable.

Yup, very first comic. :) Thanks, I still like quite a few elements of the pages I drew, not least the color scheme of that first intro panel. Just the thing as a whole could never gel because the concept wasn't thought-out. Plus everything took me insanely long, the first page in particular. That up there isn't even the final version, just a very overdone color sketch. But I didn't draw this for a class, just in my spare time and as a practice piece it was perfect. It's funny because I didn't even get proper feedback for it but I think I learned a tremendous amount just from the mistakes I made. I learned way more from this than from the cartoon class I attended at the time.