I chose The Secret Garden as it was one of the most visually stimulating stories I read growing up and I thought there was a lot of scope therefore for illustration and design within the story. Both the characters and setting blossom and develop visually throughout the book and I thought this would be something beautiful to illustrate.
I intend to bring this piece of children's classic literature into the 21st century with a contemporary style of illustration far from the classic water colour paintings and soft pencil drawings that have long accompanied the novel since it's first publication in 1911.
Having explored various different illustration styles and techniques in my research project and carried out an in-depth investigation into the study of children's book illustration (style, technique, layout, design, type) I will be able to feed this research into my final major project in bringing The Secret Garden forward and reaching modern audiences.
Whilst I will be looking to bring the illustrations, approach and design into a contemporary style to engage modern audiences I fully intend to retain the historical character of the story and I will be considering this by making sure things such as costume design, hairstyles, architecture are of the era the book is set in (late 1800's).
I will be mocking up a dummy book using the books 27 chapter titles as my subject matter (finished illustrations will be in the dummy book and roughs presented on this blog), end papers and both a front and back cover design. I aim to do around 10-15 chapter titles as this is only a dummy book with a fully illustrated cover design and end papers. As the text is not mine (however, it is outside of copyright laws) and I do not have a copy of the text to put inside the dummy book itself and it will therefore not include the written story instead just the artwork I produce for it.
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| The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett |