Having changed my idea for this project several times I am happy with the final idea I have settled on and its final outcome. I always knew that I wanted to illustrate a children's book and develop my children's book portfolio but whether this was to an existing text or my own I was unsure of. I think working to an existing text was the best decision as I could focus my efforts on my artwork and not my writing skills. I chose 'The Secret Garden' as I thought it was a good subject matter and had a lot of scope for illustrations however the text was untranslatable to modern audiences. Therefore, I wanted to bring this story alive and into the 21st century with my illustrations.
There were a few hiccups I encountered throughout this project but I am pleased with my perseverance. The initial method of screen printing for my dummy book was unsuccessful with unfocused images and fuzzy prints which took me back to the drawing board of how to approach this. Having enjoyed the collage workshop earlier in the year I decided to take this forward in my project and instead create a series of digital collages. I am pleased for this as I do in fact prefer the artwork I produced now having failed at the screen prints. I felt they had a more contemporary illustration style which is what my main goal was for this project. I am really pleased with how far my illustration style has developed in this project alone. Having only recently started working this way I am impressed with how my final pieces have come out for this project.
In terms of commercial application, I think my illustration style would help this book to reach modern audiences. The characters are fun and interesting to look at in comparison to the existing water colour illustrations that accompany the text. The next step now would be to create a pdf. document to send to publishers and prints some more dummy book copies that I could either sell or take as physical examples in a portfolio. This project has been successful in terms of developing my children's book portfolio and my own illustration style and I truly believe that I have achieved what I wanted to out of this project.
On the whole, I am pleased with the final outcome of this project and how it has helped me develop my illustration style and practice. This project has been by no means easy but worth it as I have a clearer understanding of how to work, what's important and what to consider within children's book illustration. Keeping an audience in mind I found important and useful when creating my illustrations. There were things I struggled with but all of this was a learning curve and taught me to persevere and keep trying.