On this page I was unsure about the illustrations so I continued to have a go at different things to see if I could rescue it. On the image above I have developed the landscape, as I thought that this was the element that wasn’t working, and gone for the more traditional seaweed using the dark blue shades and gradients to contrast it against the background. I liked this better than the previous design but there was still something about the page that I didn’t like. I knew that having this design would be a risk and would possible not work in this context, but I am still glad that I am challenging myself and trying to learn from it.
Because I previously designed a landscape around Nessie that was solely a solid black I thought that maybe by taking this approach it could work better than the juxtaposition of blues. This is my favourite design for this page by far because of how this now works with the existing ‘wolf monsters’. I still think that it needs refinement and slight changes, but it is looking better. Obviously, I have yet to choose an appropriate typography for the narrative and this white arial isn’t working with the illustration style.
Continuing on the same page with a sight refinement, I combined both of the dark blue gradient sea weed and the black so that the illustrations would look less flat, as well as adding more detail onto the monsters. In hindsight, this page is quite nice and isn’t a bad illustration, but I have realised that is just isn’t working for my book so I am going to scrap it and try something else.
Despite my decision not to use this and start again with the illustrations I am not worried about the time left to complete the visuals or completing a full book to a professional standard. I know that I can figure out these minor problems by practicing and working on my illustration skills, and with a strong main character (whose illustration I am extremely happy with) it will, hopefully, develop and refine as I work on the project; as well as continuing to do research on the way so that it looks as professional as possible.