Children's books - Research

Some wonderfully illustrated children's books which I find a true inspiration to behold!

Oliver Jeffers

Sara Fanelli

Carin Berger

page experiments

Time is going too quickly and it appears I may have over indulged over Easter a bit too much on chocolate and birthday times, so here are some recent workings trying to get to some final imagery for the story. I have a title! 'The mystery of the Honey Bees'. I like this, it is mysterious and hopefully makes people go "OOOOOOH...."

Compositionally i am pleased with the above image, but theres something i don't like about it as a whole, i think it is the colours and how some of the colours applied look too digital for what i want. This would be on the page showing a honey bees hard days work.

this is too bland and boring but i do think that some of the pages should have only slight activity in the images so add a change of pace .

Above a quick image where i scanned all the elements into photoshop and compiled it to look like this. Which is in fact what i have been doing for the majority of pages! Creating all the elements by hand to give it a personal and handmade feel yet then scanning these spoken of elements into photoshop to make it hopefully look somewhat more professional and also this saves time, I don't have much of that left.....

sketchbook stuff, ideas blah blah blah

Below are some brush pen drawings, very simple imagery just wanted to capture the sense of flight and flying away, perhaps use this kind of layout when the honey bees decide to flee from their hives and find themselves a better life due to the fact that humans do not appreciate all that they do for this world. This could look good if it was spaced over a a few pages so with every turn of the page you get a stream of flying bees....

backgrounds

I have been getting messy with lots of different papers and paint. My backgrounds were created by hand using a variety of materials including gold leaf, watercolour paint, acrylic paint, drawing, existing books, various textured papers and much more.

Here are some images of the backgrounds I have created for my honey bee book, some finished some not!

Characters

The Honey Bees


(The images I'm uploading are pretty poor quality as I'm using my phone... hmm gah).

simple Biro drawings

(above)

Colouring pencils & Biro

Watercolour, acrylic paint and biro

Out of the above bees I think I prefer the ones created with colouring pencils, I like the childlike effect and think this might appeal to children. Although the painted ones are much bolder. 

work in progress

Thought I'd upload some photographs of my inspirational working environment, what better place could there be to write a book about bees and nature!

progress

I have been thinking of ways to show how the world would change if we lost all our honey bees and in the event of this happening many fruits, vegetables and flowers would disappear. The way I have thought about portraying this is by having the middle of the book turning from vibrant colourful images to black and white ones. As the honey bees leave the world so do all the leaves and all of the colour of the world.
The basic plot is a story book where the world is filled with beauty, only it is not so wonderful for the creatures known as honey bees because people were unaware of all the hard work they did to keep this planet so beautiful and fruity and delicious, so they fly away taking all the goodness with them only returning when they were truly appreciated. I am going to have a section at the end of the story with random bee facts so that the book becomes more educational and also end it with some kind of moral so that the children can learn something more, some kind of moral teaching. Perhaps ' always remember to appreciate before it is too late'.

Fruits and veg for the story

I'm going to include lots of imagery of nature including trees, plant, flowers, fruits and vegetables. This is to show what we would lose if the honey bee species dies out.

Link to a table of food and plants which all bees pollinate, how essential their pollination is etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees

another list of things which need bee pollination:

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/223/1/Bees-and-your-food.html


Strawberries

Kiwi Fruit

Watermelon

HONEYCOMB - monoprints

I began this project with experimenting with different mediums to see what i liked most, here i was simply playing with monoprinting onto newsprint and cartridge paper. I quite like the effect, it has a sense of mystery with the smudged marks and tones.

Honeycomb

The pattern of honeycomb entirely sickens me, all the holes jostling for position, in fact just a mad amount of holes altogether is enough to send me over the edge! So then why oh why oh whyyyyyyy did i dare base my entire project on honey bees, good one. I couldn't bring myself to fill an entire page with the pattern so here are some experiments of me using various materials to acheive the desired outcome of honey comb.

Honey bees

just some various images I found of the Honey bee

It is important to remember that all bees pollinate, but honey bees pollinate much of what other bees do not & without them we'd have not much food produce or plants and flowers, imagine the hideousness of a world without honey bees, perish the thought.

New project time

We have been given the chance to set our own project and do whatever the hell we want! Great times. I have been exploring topics for a children's book, I love writing stories for children, something with a moral or something which is not only there to get their attention and look intriguing but something which they can learn from. Following my research I have decided to make a book about the mystery of the dying honey bee. This is a great topic for a kids story as it would teach them the necessity of honey bees on this world and without them the world would be a hideous and dull existence with barely any of the foodstuffs we have today. It is written that over the last 35 years the breed of honey bees has dropped by a staggering 35%, which is awful.


Just need to sort the actual story out now! P.s this is a very brave subject matter for me, seeing as I have Trypophobia and the pattern of honey comb and many bees together makes me feel disgusted and just plain wrong!