Thursday 6 February 2014

Analysing the Book

So to be able to progress through this brief I must analyse the text first to identify the possible illustrative spikes.

I was unsure on how to do this so I read the book freely first to refresh myself on the story and Dahl's writing style. While reading it I began to get ideas and visualisations of illustrations, many of which were actually in different places to where Blake has illustrated.

After reading it the first time, I armed myself with a wad of divided sticky notes and a notepad and pen and prepared to analyse the text properly.

 

This was my method of analysing the text. I wrote down the page numbers and a small description of the scene. I also pinned a sticky note to the page at the paragraph or sentence where the spike was. 
I also included little quotes from the book, specific ones that had given me ideas of what to draw. For example, on page 45 the doctor told the grandmother to stop smoking 'Those vile black cigars'. In my mind I could clearly visualise what these would look like- and as I wanted to put in little illustrations here and there throughout the book it was the perfect phrase to spark an idea. 

 

This was the book I annotated. I scanned it in to show the sheer volume of illustrative spikes I have identified- however, although it seems a daunting amount at first, many of these spikes are just small illustrations that won't even take half a page so I'm not concerned about it. 

Many illustrators I like combine small illustrations throughout text, such as in Black Beauty, Gobbolino the Witches' Cat and throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events. Thus I will be researching these books and their illustrators to draw some inspiration from the way the illustrations have interacted with the text within.  


 

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