Cats, cats and more cats...

As well as the Little White Lies brief that i've posted, we were also given a Caldecott brief. We had to choose a piece of text that Randolph Caldecott has previously illustrated, and create an illustration to represent that text. After researching, I went with The House That Jack Built, a text that I think most people will have atleast heard of in some form. Being in a class that is made up of graphic novelists, childrens illustrators and general illustrators, we have constantly been told that we should have a style that suits our specialism. Being a general illustrator myself, we get told that if we get a brief that is given to all 3 specialism (Caldecott being one) then we should be able to take it and give it a twist. The pieces that Caldecott illustrated were mostly childrens texts/poems, so we had to take it and turn it into an adult piece, or atleast make it less childlike. So I took THTJB and made the cat a darker character, created a back story of a squatter with a dark side.
I played with the text so that the original piece:
This is the cat, that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
Became:
This is the cat, that killed the rat, drank the malt and lay in the house that Jack built.

 We had a group crit but i'm absolutely rubbish at explaining my ideas and so after a long talk with my lecturer I finally got it ok'd, and so experimentation in media began...

 Initial Linocuts for cat.
Left: Lino and pencil. Right: Lino and watercolour.

Watercolour and brushpen.

Two experiments of lino and watercolour.

Experiment with showing light and dark with Lino.

 

Sketch of how final image will look.

So I think i've decided i'll be using monoprint for background textures, the cat will be in lino and coloured in watercolour with the shadow either monoprint or another media. Hopefully finish it this weekend and post the finished pieces of LWL's and Caldecott on here, after a crit on Tuesday!