Sequential narrative

A story from my childhood in mixed media.

Exploration

The goal of this project was to develop and illustrate a story relating to my background, culture, or history in which I am the hero. The illustrations had to use a variety of materials and incorporate one point perspective, two point perspective, and atmospheric perspective.  

I began my task by calling up my parents for any interesting events in childhood or those that happened to them or their parents. We talked for hours and it brought up a lot of fond memories of spending time at my grandmother’s personal farm in the countryside. I grew up there with my cousin and then came back to visit when I was in elementary school. We were a rambunctious couple of kids so every visit had a story. I had some photographs from my most recent visit and so pulled them out for reference and to determine my storyboard. 

 Illustrating

One story that I remembered very well was when my grandmother tasked me with obtaining a jar of fresh milk from the nearby village. There was only one very old cow in the village owned by a very old couple and I had never spoken with them before. Their home was a mile away from my grandmother’s farm and to reach it I had to go through a small forest, cross a creek with a broken bridge and traverse the village fields.

For most of the panels of this sequential narrative I used ink wash and ink with quill. One of the panels is colored pencil on black paper in two-point perspective. Another is watercolor pencils with atmospheric perspective.

I found the watercolor pencils to be the most challenging. The green scene was difficult to illustrate using only three watercolor pencils. While I would normally mix my colors on a palette is using watercolors, using watercolor pencils meant that I would have to mix the colors after they had already been applied to paper and that made if difficult to define the various leaves and plants in the scene. I actually scrapped my initial watercolor piece and started afresh using the method of gathering the paint off of the pencil with a brush.

Ink wash on the other hand came the most naturally to me even though it was challenging. I used waterproof ink so I was not able to remove the color in any way once it was applied to paper. Using a quill also made the thickness of the stroke unpredictable. There are a lot of mistakes in the final piece but I really enjoyed layering the thin coats of ink mixed with water and working in the gradations of one color.