Literal Illustration

The Man In Black: Collected Stories by The Folio Society.
My Story: 'Lifeline'
Front cover and Spine, 2 colour Illustration
Cover 165 x 231, Spine 30 x 231
Full Bleed Illustration 160 x 226 (300dpi)
Vignette 105 x 50

The Folio Society:

Lifeline, Fear On Four

Lifeline was the title of the audio book I got to Illustrate for, Its about a hotline where our mc encounters a person with the exact same voice as someone he used to know, who passed away years prior.

Research

First things I did was a small page of sketches and picked out words which I thought represented my story, as well as creating a pinterest board to have a sense of where this story was taking place (2000s Small town in the UK).

Atmosphere/ environment Research

From the accents to the descriptions of the environments I could tell this was set in the 2000s or so and was located in a small British town. I used a collection of images of get familiar with this setting.

With the use of a house phone also being a big point in the story which needed to be included in my illustrations, I looked at time accurate house phones, also looked at a payphone and cars for my header images

Lecture Notes & Artists

Barry Moser

Arthur Rackham

Anton Lomaev

My Artists

Angie Hoffmeister

I found Angie through the Folio Society, as she illustrated a few covers for Shirley Jackson books. I was immediately drawn to how she drew characters, her use of line in their faces is beautiful, partnered with the de-saturated colours with a watercolour like texture to them. I definitely wanted to try looking at her style for this project.

Luis Mendo

Recently discovering Luis Mendo had bridged the gap in my head of how to create full illustration with the style in ink and flat colour that I enjoy so much. I wanted to experiment with the colour of line in my drawing as well as the same graphic lighting he uses in his work.

To get an idea of the vibe/ aesthetic I wanted this collection to be, I looked at various dark horror styles

First to fit with working for The Folio Society, I looked at an adaptation of a horror/ scary book and found Angela Barrett who has a vintage soft type of illustration, which I liked but wasn't quite how I wanted to take this project.

Next was Bernie Wrightson, who used Pen and Ink and creates such intricate details and has such an intelligent use of lighting.
Pen and Ink was a direction I already wanted to go, but looking at Bernie's work really solidified it.
I personally didn't think the level of detail was needed however for the particular story I had been given.

Ink and Watercolour Artists:

Charles-Frédéric Soehnée, although not using ink, had a style that looks as though hes using the watercolour as a pencil/pen and drawing some of the aspects in the images.

Forever and always I am looking at the sketchbooks of Chris Ware, knowing exactly how much is enough when it comes to pen and ink is something he has absolutely mastered and having his work as reference for my use of ink is crucial.

Simon Prades and his use of watercolour and ink was something else I looked at, the surrealism of his work as well as his ink skills were things I wanted to take forward.

Feature Illustration

Thumbnails

Experimenting with styles

Developing thumbnails further

Everything about the audio story I was given from the accents to the sound effects made me think of a small, rundown, British town. So to match with the dark atmosphere of horror stories, I went with dark, de-saturated colours.

A lot of work needed done on the perspective, body language and lighting, however I loved these two outcomes.

After a feedback with Dwayne I thought the pose and composition of my final two ideas weren't the best I could do, so I had a friend pose for me and I got this fantastic reference, which, using my red and blue colour scheme from the images above, I created my final illustration with ink and watercolour, looking a lot at Chris Ware and his sketchbook work.

Full page Illustration final versions

Final Version, with 3mm bleed

Cover Research

The Folio Society

For our cover design we were told we could use a total of 2 spot colours, along with deciding the colour of the leather that the book will be wrapped with.
Meaning we have a background colour and two spot colours on top. This means the decision of which colours to use will be a very important one. The designs I've picked out here are ones that have a lack of colours used in their designs.

Artist Research

Malika Favre was one of the first artists I looked at for her clever use of a very limited colour pallet. She wasn't the kind of thing I wanted to go for but having her as a first look at this type of illustration was defiantly beneficial.

Tom Haugomat is another digital artist like Malika who uses different ways of overlapping colour to create these beautifully and intelligently composed images. This was the style I originally wanted to go forward with.

A different approach I looked at was the art of Saul Bass, the illustrations he does have a sense of texture and/or sketching that felt more appropriate for what I was going for in the cover.

Thumbnails

Final Variations

Chapter Heading Image

For my chapter header, I knew the style I wanted as it needed to match my full page illustration. I looked at some images of headers to get a faint idea of the thing I was creating, then I made a board of ideas and inspiration while re-listening to my story.