Week 4- The National Archives Visit

The Experience 

Seeing the real documents was a refreshing method of researching and an experience that makes you connect with history. It somehow made everything I've learnt about history seem very real and accessible. 

The trip will be of a huge benefit when starting the designing and structuring of the e-book, especially taking part in the KS1 class activities. This really put into perspective the learning abilities and expectations of that age group, therefore helping me to chose suitable activities to include. 

Out of the 10 significant people chosen for us, I only knew the history of a few the significant, knew a few other names, and some were unknown to me. Being able to look through all of their documents has helped me decide on who I think would be interesting, and people I wouldn't ordinarily select.

Images of some of the documents

Week 2; Art Styles and Audiences

First object books; baby/toddler

The very hungry caterpillar is a toddler book written and illustrated by Eric Carle in 1969, and the art style of this book is an illustrated collage.  I've chosen this book for the baby toddler age because of its illustration medium and it has been a huge success for decades, selling over 30 million copies. The reason the use of collage for young children is important is the simple, graphic-like shapes with bold colours. This is enough to hold the attention of the toddler, as they don’t need a massive amount of detail to understand the story. The illustrations are more stylised than realistic, but also communicates clearly and includes enough detail to show what each item is. Young children react well to illustrations such as these as they can relate to the playful and non-perfect images, seeming as though the images have been created by children themselves. 

 Picture book; 3-6

The Gruffalo is illustrated by Axel Scheffler and written by Julia Donaldson. This book contains more narrative than The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but not as much Matilda by Roald Dahl, and because of this it is very suitable for the 3-6 category. The story contains full spread illustrations that support the narrative; this means that children can follow the visuals as their parents read to them, or to support an early reader. The art style in this book is much more complicated with a mixed media approach.

How do you do the illustrations?

“I start with a pencil sketch... often I have to do quite a few before I'm happy with it. I can then trace the sketch on a lightbox onto my watercolour paper (Saunders Waterford 300gr HP), again with pencil. I would then draw the outlines in black ink with a dip-pen. Then I'd colour in everything with Ecoline inks using brushes. After that I use Faber Polychromos and Prismacolour crayons on top of that layer of ink. In the end I might have to redraw some of the black lines and use some white gouache for highlights or snowflakes.” A.Scheffler

With the illustrations being more sophisticated and an increase in detail, the audience has a better understanding and awareness of the characters and setting. This is needed with an older age group as they have an imagination and need an exciting story to keep focused until the end. 

Information / reference title, Ages 9-11

Roald Dahl’s Matilda is illustrated by Quentin Blake and first published in 1988. Blake’s art style in these stories are dip-pen and ink with watercolour paint. These seem more basic than the illustrations seen in the Gruffalo, but simultaneously are very beautiful and considered. This is perhaps because the target audience is older again now and don’t need the visuals to be saturated with information, but just as small breathers in the story, and to give the reader a foundation to imagine. I also believe that children of this age group would consider a full page spread, or another medium to be too childish and would be put off from reading that story.

Axel Scheffler (2016) Any Questions? [Online] Available from: https://axelscheffler.com/any-questions [Accessed 11th October 2016]

Quentin Blake (2016) How I draw. [Online] Available from: https://www.quentinblake.com/about-drawing/how-i-draw [Accessed 11th October 2016]

Week 1; Analysis of illustrator Lauren Child

After watching the documentary ‘When We Were Young’ during the first session, the illustrator who caught my imagination and attention the most was Lauren Child. Child is the author and illustrator of her children’s books, one of the most known being Clarice Bean.

From looking at Child’s technique in her work, it is easy to so that she is experimental, using cut outs of many textures, images from magazines and ect, and also using full photographs instead of creating the whole background. I visited her website, http://www.milkmonitor.com/, to gain further insight on her technique. The images were interesting, playful, and fairly unrealistic.

Some of the illustrations are full of patterns with many things to look at, some are more simple and minimal, focussing more on what the image is trying to convey. The illustrations can sometimes spread across both pages of the layout, with the typography being placed playfully around the images, in different sizes showing emphasis on some words.

For me these images are very suitable for the audience of children because of the bright colours and the sense of the image being childlike. Thus being said, it can also be appreciated by adults as you can see the composition, characterisation and use of colour have all been considered well designed. 

    Lauren Child (2012) FAQ’s. [Online] Available from: http://www.milkmonitor.com/faqs/ [Accessed 3^rd October 2016]