Children book page: the fox and the crow

This was my most favorite week so far in the e-course Make Art That Sells
I thought it would be, and I was right: The children book market!

Our assignment was to make a cover or a double page for a children's book,
based upon Aesop's fable: 'The Fox And The Crow'

 

On Monday our inspiring teacher Lilla Rogers gave us the new subject: foxes.
My first reaction was: YES! I like to draw animals and I like foxes!

I looked on the internet for source material. Lots of beautiful foxes there!
I started to draw them. First realistic with pencil to get to know them more.
After that I played with shapes, lines and used all kinds of other materials.

I found it very challenging and fun to add various expressions and attitudes to the foxes.
Also interesting to find out what makes a fox a fox: his pointed ears, his sharp nose
His color and ofcourse his beautiful tail.

It was funny to see, the more foxes I drew, the longer his tail became :-)

After several hours of drawing, cutting, scanning and playing,
foxes were everywhere in my house.

Here a picture of my work in progress on my kitchen table:

I came up with a fox character. I've played with the idea of his long tail.
That would be a nice idea for a story and it could bring my fox in several situations.

We knew there would be also a crow involved in the story, so I worked a bit
on their relationship too. And  tried to keep the character consistant,
which is quite a challenge:

On Wednesday we got the big assignment: a cover or spread
after Aesop's fable: 'the fox and the crow' in your own style.


I first made several possible composition sketches. Here are two of them:

And  there was his loooong tail again:-)

At first I thought my fox would be too sweet to do something rude
to the crow (stealing his cheese) because in my head they where friends.

I liked the idea the fox was using his tail as a violin to seduce the crow to sing.
I chose that option to work on and built the spread.

We also worked on handlettering, which is also quite new to me.
I played a little bit with it, but I must say I need to explore this a lot more.

I came upon this inspiring handlettering site including
lots of tips, tutorials and videos about this subject.

Before I submitted my final spread, I first placed it in our facebook group,
I asked for some feedback, I thought there was someting missing, didn't know what.

A very good suggestion was to let the text follow the tail of the fox.
Besides all the information we get, is that another thing what I like so much about this course: the stimulating, supportive and positive atmosphere in the class :-)

If you want to have a closer look on my final spread click here

Will be contined, another two weeks to go...