Ah horror! I like painting horror as much as I like painting cute stuff. Spread 07 is a fairly tame horror scene. All in all in got me thinking just how scary this children’s book is going to be! Every time some poor child looks at a butiki (house lizard) they are going to recall these images for the rest of their lives!
Well at least the hunchback isn’t a vampire. Here he looks like an ogre - or Mr. Hyde with a wicked grin. The victim here is the same gentleman from spread 06. Lucky enough to get the prettiest girl in town, but unlucky to be only around for two spreads. Because this spread is the last you’ll see him. I should probably fix his eyes to face our left… as he is already holding his arm up in alarm.
One of the key concerns for this illustration was once again bringing in warm colors from a warm light source, thereby balancing the image as to prevent it from being too cold or too monochromatic. Torchlight, lamp light, fire light - I didn’t find it hard to include them here. Moonlight added colder lights which craft the form of the church, the town, and both victim and felon.
I like how the cold lights fall on our hunchback. It makes him look real sinister. Unfortunately it draws attention to his poorly illustrated grip on the stone block he’s about to bring down on the distinguished gentleman. Will have to fix that grip.
One thing worth noting is the fallen hand illustration. This wasn’t in the initial study. I smartened up after reading Illustrating Children’s Books : Creating Pictures For Publication by Martin Salisbury. Bought it just recently and decided to apply a few pointers from the book on improving the pacing. It was 1193 pesos when I bought it. I highly recommend the book.
Ok. Two plot points occur within this spread, and both needed to be illustrated.
First, the hunchback is found out. That’s the easy one.
Second, Marina confronts our murderer and tells him to go yank the heart out of his mom. “If you love me, gut it out,” that sort of thing. Seriously, she must have been in trauma to say something like that.
The second one will still need a lot of work There’s a downward camera angle that required some awareness. There’s a afternoon light source cast through the prison bars. There are fabric patterns. And then that’s supposed be our pretty 20-something Marina crying and shouting at the same time (generally it’s so NOT a pretty sight that the lady ends up looking like someone else.)
My attempt at creating an afternoon in a tropical prison resulted in a prison from steamy Mexico. To balance the spread I decided a cool pallette for the smaller illustration. I will still need to find ways to cool down the bigger illustration to make it less Mexico..
