House of Illustration & Folio Society Competition - War Horse Final Outcomes

I just had an induction in waterless lithography which is a print process I immediately took to, and thought that the textured and tonal appearance of the prints would suit the subject matter of War Horse. I decided to experiment with the process for my final prints and am really happy with how they look.

I coloured the prints using watercolour and added in some subtle tissue collage. They're all heavily textured which I think is pretty effective.

I'm not sure how well the three illustrations complement each other but I like the way they look anyway although my tutors were concerned that they weren't that legible.

I think the binding design is more well resolved than the illustrations. In general the outcome for the project could probably have been better but in general I'm pretty happy with what I produced in the given time and think it's quite an original take on the book. I'm looking forward to trying more lithography in future!

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.