College of Knowledge

A few years ago I did a couple of years on a part-time BA degree course in Children's Illustration at a local art school. If nothing else I think it helped my drawing and I'd have to say I really enjoyed it although it ceratinly wasn't everything it was cracked up to be!

Anyway, I came across some of the work I did for various projects and thought I'd show something of them here. One of the projects was to get hold of an old copy of a children's book and have a go at re-illustrating it. The book I chose was "My Dad's Got An Alligator" by Jeremy Strong. The first thing to do was a bit of character development for the alligator and here is what I came up with:


The alligator in question had just been helping himself to the soap hence the bubbles by the way...
These illustrations were to be in black and white only and here's what a page may have looked like:


Then the problem of the cover illustration reared it's ugly head and I did have great difficulty with this one and here is my first attempt:

This didn't work as such (not dynamic enough as I recall) and so I eventually came up with this:



I came up with an image for the dad in the story and coloured it up because I liked it so much:



Some of the lecturers unkindly claimed it reminded them of me (well, I suppose I did have a moustache and beard at the time!)