House of Illustration & Folio Society Competition - War Horse

My final illustration brief this semester has been pretty hard work - it's for the House of Illustration and Folio Society book illustration competition which is a big deal in the illustration world. We were tasked to produce 3 illustrations and a binding for the book "War Horse" by Michael Morpurgo, which I can safely say is now my least favourite book... Although War Horse is relatively short and being a childrens' book, a pretty easy read, I still found it difficult trawling through all the text and choosing scenes to illustrate as well as deciding on a style. I started off by looking at horses and different ways to draw them.

I didn't want to go for anything too literal so I then looked at simple cut out shapes and abstraction of the figures.

I eventually chose three scenes which I thought kind of summed up the main themes of the book and also featured most of the main characters; the ploughing scene at the start; the scene where the horses are being transported to France by ship in the middle; then the no-mans' land scene towards the end.

I also decided to make the binding quite simple and graphic using the shape of an aerial view of a hay field which has been partially harvested - symbolic of Joey and Topthorn being taken away from the farm in France.