Let's chat about Composition
Week 2 progress of my dummy book project for my portfolio
Hello! I hope you all have had a great weekend!
This week my main focus has been on composition! Composition in illustration in general is such a wide topic and it is also the topic of the moment, with quite a few of us here on substack discussing it. It is paramount to the readability/ engagement of a children’s book and is something I need to improve. So let’s dive in on how I did over the last week trying to tackle this topic regarding my dummy book project!
This week I had the following aims when it came to composition:
Decide for every book spread, whether it be a double, single, or vignette illustration.
Create a rough flip book of every spread to get an idea of how the book flows together once all of the compositions are decided.
Start creating greyscale versions of each spread to showcase as a potential portfolio piece.
Deciding compositions for each spread and making notes
My first task of the week was the decide for each spread what type of illustration it was going to be out of:
Double page spread - a spread that takes up both pages of the spread
Single-page spread - a spread that only takes up a single page of a two-page spread
Vignettes/ spot illustrations - singular illustrations where there can be one or many across the two-page spread.
It’s very easy to want every spread to be a double-page spread and in some books that works. However the majority of the time there has to be some variety to keep the engagement and readability of the text with the illustrations.
I realised pretty quickly that the text I am illustrating with this dummy book requires a mixture of spread types. Some of them were easy to work out while others were harder. I started by reading through the text and making a list of what I initially thought each spread would be. Then for each spread, I started to make some notes on what I wanted to potentially show in that spread.
Visual research of compositions and a mood board
Once I had done my research on the text, I went back to my original mood board for week 1 and started to expand it to include images of interiors, exteriors and props that I wanted to use. I also started to research various compositions of scenes that I liked. I looked at movie stills and played around in programs such as Sketch Up to create some 3D models of the interiors I could use.
Sketch some basic thumbnails.
When I felt like I had completed my visual research I then moved onto sketching thumbnails of the spreads in my sketchbook. This was my favourite part of the process. I had four main focuses:
Camera angles
What should be the main focus of the scene
The mood I was trying to convey
Where should the wording for each spread go
I dedicated a page in my sketchbook to each spread of the book and drew out as many options as I could until I had a couple that I quite liked.
Create a flip book of my spreads.
Having some thumbnails of my potential spreads was great but I needed to check if together they had readability and would keep the user engaged. To do this I drew out for each spread the thumbnails I liked on slightly larger pieces of paper and attached them with some masking tape. Then I would flip through the book to see how the spreads worked altogether and make changes accordingly.
It was so fun seeing a miniature version of my dummy book even though it was all very rough drawings that I would understand.
Excuse my terrible one handed filming skills of this flip through!
Start creating some greyscale versions of each spread
The final task I had to complete this week was to create greyscale versions of each spread. I decided to do this on my iPad so that I could add the text in the correct size. It was a fun task to try and map out the tonal values I wanted in each spread.
And that is all of my progress for composition week! This coming week we are finally at the stage where I am going to create a full-colour final spread for the dummy book. I am super excited to finally be at this part of the process! If you are interested in hearing how I get on with creating a spread next week and you haven’t subscribed already, please consider subscribing below. It is completely free!
Otherwise, I hope you have a great week on all your projects!
Until next time!
Em x