My project for course: Sketchbook Techniques for Children's Illustration

My project for course: Sketchbook Techniques for Children's Illustration

For this project I decided to revisit a fairytale “ Little Penguin Pik Pok” by Adam Bahdaj (1969). This fairytale was made into a stop motion series and I use to watch it before going to bed as a child.
Penguin Pik Pok lives on a Snow Storm’s Island, which he finds very boring so he decides to go on an adventure.
During one of his adventures he’s sad that he can’t fly and asks a whale for help.

I started by sketching the characters- penguins and whales.
Next I made a few thumbnails. Even though Ema explained the composition very well, I still do have problem witch ‘seeing it’ correctly.

It did not work out as planned. The background was way more difficult to paint than I thought and also it totally spoiled the illustration. It made it very messy- lesson learned. It is a big problem of mine to always want to include a lot of details and things.
I am happy with how the whale turned out thoug.

I am way more content with my final illustration.
Once again I learned that less is more and that I really have to spend more time on thumbnails and on what I want to say in my works.
Funny thing is is that I started this because I wanted to draw exactly like Ema because I love her works so much. I did however discover that it is not really for me but I am able to translate what I’ve learned to my own way of drawing.