Before Christmas I blogged about the first of the three new pieces that I illustrated for the collaborative calendar project that I’m part of. I’m working with the fabulous Angela Matteson, Juana Martinez-Neal, and Maria Bogade and we’re at an exciting stage of the process at the moment. Several hundred calendars are in the process of being packaged up & mailed out across Europe and the States… it’ll be very interesting to see what happens with it all!
Above: illustrations by my ladies! (Left to right) Angela Matteson, Maria Bogade, Juana Martinez-Neal
Our website is up & running and looking beautiful… check it out here: www.storybookbrushes.com
So now I can share the second piece I created for the calendar! The story I chose was Sleeping Beauty… and again going for lots of drama, I decided to illustrate the moment when the evil fairy puts the curse on Sleeping Beauty as a baby, as revenge for not being invited to the celebration of the princess’s birth.
As I wrote in my last post about this series, I was interested in bringing in some elements of film noir and melodrama. I wanted the angles of this piece to create a lot of drama and emphasize the sense of disruption and calamity that are central to this scene in the story. Below you can see my thumbnail, followed by my detailed rough where I was starting to work out the lighting. I loved the idea of the evil fairy being almost silhouetted against light from the doorway as she bursts in… and casting a shadow on the floor. I realised that l’d almost unconsciously mirrored the shape of her skirt in the shape of the king and queen on the left, with the queen’s hair and the king’s right arm.
And here’s the finished pencil drawing before I added colour and texture in Photoshop:
So along with the princess pricking her finger, these are the first of my two calendar illustrations.
If you’re an editor or art director in the publishing industry and want to make sure you’re on our mailing list to receive this fantastic calendar, you can subscribe here: http://storybookbrushes.com/contact/
If you’d like to buy the calendar it’s now selling at a January discount price of just £4.00 and all proceeds will go towards our printing costs. If you live in Europe or the US… you can also buy the calendar from the other ladies who may be based nearer to where you live. Check the list of shops on the website… Juana and Angela are in the US and Maria’s in Germany.
We’re also currently doing a giveaway! We’ll all be blogging about our calendar pieces over the next few weeks, and to be in with a chance of winning a calendar, just leave a comment on any of our blogs. You have until the 20th of January… Good luck!
These are beautiful!! Really interesting to read about your technique too – thankyou for sharing. The way you have illustrated the faces of the king and queen reminds me of the way faces are painted in religious icons. They’re lovely :)
Great post Kat, and the finished calendar looks brill. Hope the mail-out goes well for you all – as I’m sure it will.
Beautiful Illustrations! The calendar is very nice!
I am so impressed with everyone’s work in this calendar. What a great collection. You definitely have some heightened drama here, Katriona. Great perspective as well!
I’m really in love with your shadowing technique. The amount of details in your drawings combinated with this feeling of simplicity is just beautiful…
Beautiful work, as always.
Wow, you have such beautiful work as well! I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Maria… and what a great project you are all working on together! Excited to see the calendar!
Beautiful illustrations, and lovely calendar :-)