"The Elves And The Shoemaker" Character Development

Over the past two weeks i have been designing characters as part of the Picture Book course i am attending. We have to select a fairytale story and re-design a main character. The story i picked was "The Elves And The Shoemaker," i loved that story when i was growing up, the thoughts of Elves which came to help in the middle of the night was very believable to me!! I decided to re-design the main Elf character. I played around with many idea's of what she could look like and what style would be used to draw her. For inspiration i looked towards the amazing Disney artist Mary Blair, the brains behind the design of "It's A Small World" and the feature film's of "Peter Pan" and "Alice In Wonderland."

Here are some of the character development sketches I've created, (sorry the photo quality isn't that great) :

"The Tiger Who Came to Tea" and Me

Tonight i start on my "Picture Book Creation" course. We are asked to bring in a copy of our favourite picture book. Ive chosen to bring Judith Kerr's masterpiece "The Tiger Who Came to Tea."  Growing up i would always get this book out from my school library just to marvel at the pictures in it, it got to the stage , when i was in an older class, where my teacher banned me from taking it out because i "shouldn't be taking out picture books" at my age. Little did she know id be still looking at it almost twenty years later!

A poet, a baker, a picture book maker!

Ive decided to get back into the habit of using my blog to promote the work and illustrations that i create. Tomorrow i start a new venture, i have enrolled on a year long course in which i will create my own picture book. The very thought of this excites me so i am looking forward to getting pencil to paper! Hopefully i will get into the habit of keeping this blog updated on my progress.