Week 16: Wrapping Up

Started this week by getting Thumbelina and her mothers home finished. This house has plagued me from the start and took the longest time to wrap up. I started this in week 7 and I've struggled almost all the way through trying to make this look right. I got a tonne of feedback with this which was really helpful, but buildings are not my forte, at all. But it was a learning process with my main lesson being that if I don't feel great about a piece, I should head back to the sketching phase rather than just noodle at it and hope it turns out ok.

This week also wrapped up the last bit of design work for Thumbelina, the props needed for a specific scene in the book, where Thumbelina is singing and rowing herself from side to side on a plate full of water.

From this point on all that is left for this project is for me to take my designs and put them into some context. Mostly in the form of illustrating the story beats in the Thumbelina book.

“….during the day she amused herself on a table, where the woman had placed a plateful of water. Round this plate were wreaths of flowers with their stems in the water, and upon it floated a large tulip-leaf, which served Tiny for a boat. Here the little maiden sat and rowed herself from side to side, with two oars made of white horse-hair. It really was a very pretty sight. Tiny could, also, sing so softly and sweetly that nothing like her singing had ever before been heard.”

"Then she went home and planted it, and immediately there grew up a large handsome flower, something like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed as if it were still a bud.

"It is a beautiful flower," said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-coloured leaves."

With this project coming to a close in the next few weeks most of my time will be spent on getting the final book together, working on the text, layouts, inside/outside art for the book etc. A lot of this work will be sketches and B&W scenes. Which I'm not complaining about, since after spending so much time painting digitally it's been nice and relaxing to be able to go back to my sketchbook.

Inside cover art

Cover Thumbnails