Literal Illustration.

This new project involved us each receiving a short ghost story written by M R James - the tale I was given was 'The Tractate Middoth'.
      The story centres around an old man, named Dr Rant, who left individual wills for both his niece and nephew. Each were told differing information in order to lead them to their will before the other. The wills are inside a book - The Tractate Middoth - hidden in a library not too far from Dr Rant's property. However, while searching for the book, the nephew, Eldred, discovers that it is haunted by his Uncle. Dr Rant is now seen as a shell, with inset eyes, cloaked in cobwebs and surrounded by dust. His ghost scares the library worker, Garrett, that went looking for the book in the library for Eldred, causing him to faint, and ultimately take time off work. While away, Garrett stays with a woman, Mrs Simpson, who he finds to be Dr Rants niece, and her daughter. After speaking to them about the book, he aids them in  tracking down the will. On his mission he ends up following Eldred, who now is in possession of the book, before watching him die at the hands of Dr Rant's ghost. The story ends with Garrett returning the will to Mrs Simpson, marrying her daughter, and then ultimately, them all moving into the newly inherited property together.
      To begin, I collected together lots of images on Pinterest that I could use for reference and inspiration.

Finding images on Pinterest really helped me in understanding specifically how colour and lighting could be used to enhance atmosphere. I feel it was a vital step for the project.
​     Next, I researched what a clergyman looked like as I really had no idea what Dr Rant was meant to have been and looked like.

I then watched the BBC adaptation of the story, in order to gain a better understanding of the story, as I found it quite confusing upon my first read.

I then went and found an article displaying the inspiration behind the movie, 'Crimson Peak', due to Dwayne's suggestion. The movie features a gothic ghost story, which was very similar to my own tale, therefore I thought it could be extremely helpful to research.

The next step that I felt I needed to do was to go back and highlight the key parts of the story so I could go over exact details for the imagery I felt would lend itself for the full bleed illustration.

After finding the key parts of the story that I wanted to focus on, I began getting down my initial ideas, using the text as direct reference.

As I got further into creating my thumbnails, I focused in more on capturing the mood through lighting, and was heavily inspired by the lighting of this photograph that I found on Pinterest:

After the initial thumbnails, I focused in on the idea that I felt worked best, and began to add colour in Procreate.

Once I developed a little further, I knew I was in a place that I was extremely happy with, and understood what I wanted visually. Therefore I went onto my final.

Overall, I'm super happy with how this turned out. I wanted to focus on feeling and atmosphere more than anything, and I think I have done that effectively. It's also in a style, with brushes that I'm not extremely comfortable with, but I really think that they both worked in my favour.

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Vignette Design.

We also had to design a greyscale chapter header illustration for our stories. I was really excited about this part as it was totally different from anything I'd done before. I started by doing some research of vignettes as I was unsure of what they generally looked like.

 To begin idea generating, I created boxes for the correct scale, so I would know my drawing worked for the specifications, and inserted the title. I did this as I thought it would be important to consider how the design worked with the text. Then, I began my thumbnails.

As usual, once I got to place that I was happy with, I pushed a little further just to see if there was any way of improving the concept.

The next, and final step after this was to complete the finished illustration at the correct specifications.

This illustration is one of my favourite things that I've ever done; I absolutely love the look of it. I'm so beyond proud and happy with the final product.

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In Context.

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