Colour and Lighting.

For our final task before Christmas, we were each allocated a text to base an illustration upon. I received 'The Mind and Dying of Mr Punch', by David Grubb - a poem following Punch, of Punch and Judy, and his depressive, murderous intent. The poem, upon a first read, was obviously a horror/ thriller, which caused my mind to gravitate towards Japanese horror Manga, such as the work of Junji Ito, and Suehiro Maruo.
      To start, I wanted to explore the Japanese horror style further, so I went to Pinterest and collected lots of images associated with the imagery, and any other images that interested me.

    I then wrote down the excerpt of the poem that I was given and highlighted the information that seemed important, and any interesting imagery. From there, I created thumbnail sketches based upon the lines that I selected, adapting my style to be more aligned with the Japanese horror approach.

When creating the thumbnails, I really tried to stick to the points of the art direction, and if an idea did not match it initially, I attempted to modify it. It was a lot of fun to make such a haunting version of such an iconic children's character and story, and I really wanted to embrace the horror and contrast that the poem brought.
     Once I was happy with my thumbnailing, I selected my favourite design and sketched it out in pink pencil to the specified size. I did alter some of the drawing at this point for the sake of the image being more dramatic and legible.

I then began to get to work with a dip pen and ink. I took this very slow and steady, while being calculated with my marks so I knew everything had the depth and appearance that I wanted.

This took quite a long time as I was intentionally being very precise, but I really do feel that it was worth it. I'm extremely happy with it. Then, to finish, I used watered down gouache and added the blood to the illustration. To do this, I painted on the gouache in the large areas, and the small splatters, and then also used my finger to drag the paint around and smudge it.

Overall, I am so beyond happy with this illustration as it's in a style, and with a medium I'm really not very comfortable with, and I think it turned out very well. The process also furthered my learning using dip pen and ink, and how dramatic and effective thoughtful marks are.