Initial Sketches, Further Research & Personal Tutorial with Louise

This week, I started on some inital sketches just to get my brain flowing for illustrating the Snow Queen. I began drawing things that popped into my head; main symbols such as the snowflake and began on some character design of Gerda, the heroine, and Bae the reindeer from part five of the story. They are as shown below.

As far as media is concerned, I have started experimenting with a range of material to see what will work best including brush pen, colour fine liners, water colour, water colour pencils and gouache, as these are the ones that have suited my work best in the past.

I've additionally been reading some texts which analyse the Snow Queen, in particular Wolf Lederer's The Kiss of the Snow Queen which gives some quite insightful and in depth analysis of the themes in the story that one wouldn't normally pick up just from reading the book.

The Raven

Gerda character designs I

II

III

IV

Reindeer drawings from London Zoo 

II

III

The Kiss of the Snow Queen by Wolfgang Lederer

 I also had a tutorial with Louise today where she advised me on my work. Here were the points made summarised:

• Stop researching other artists - put pen to paper and draw!
• Draw from life
• Work larger
• Find out Gerda's background to create a more informed character design
• Create a modern interpretation of the story by the way I draw instead of changing the characters' appearance
• Go the print room to get an A3 sketchbook bound with different types of paper, as some of my work from the last project could have been used as final pieces