My project for course: Animal Characters in Watercolor for Children’s Books

I draw children's illustrations and illustrations for adult books. Now I have taken on the task of illustrating a spread for the book by writer Ekaterina Ilyina “Rawley Rabbit and Others” using watercolor technique. This is a very cute book for children aged 3-10 about a team of friends going on a trip. For this illustration I was inspired by Julia Mellan's illustrations, I also love Beatrix Potter's illustrations. These had to be very cute, warm and cozy illustrations.

First I had to find a plot, a composition. The text for it told about the acquaintance of the main characters with rat friends in the hold of a ship

Then I realized that we need to take a good look at what our animals look like. And try to find facial expressions and images for the characters. This required a lot of sketches. The kangaroo turned out right away, but the rabbit didn’t work out. He was too doll-like. In the final illustration he still lacks liveliness

But we didn’t like the presence of clothes on the animals and we decided to remove the clothes. I also didn’t like the kangaroo pose. and we made a new sketch

I transferred the last version of the sketch with the changes made using a light tablet onto watercolor paper. I chose A3 format, since the scene with a large number of characters, I took Clairefontine Etival cellulose paper, which was incorrect, since it is more difficult to make gradients on cellulose, and it was impossible to remove the color later.

It took me 2 days to paint). I used Nevskaya Palitra, Van Gogh and Cotman watercolors. But I didn't understand what kind of paper tape Julia Mellan used in the tutorial, so I used regular tape and clear tape. This is not very convenient. Then I read in the comments that paper tape is called gummed kraft. Now I'll definitely try it.

I really liked the result. I am delighted with Julia Mellan's course. I also took her second course. And I can't wait to start illustrating a big book about animals.