Exercise: Client Visuals

Here I have picked a book cover. The book is ''Tears of the Giraffe'' by Alexander McCall Smith, ed. Abacus, London, 2000. The illustrator is Hannah Firmin.

This exercise is about distilling the image, until an only edited form remains, that still makes sense. Like getting to a 'visual' in a reverse process.

I was asked to make drawings 2.5 times larger than the printed size. In this case, it was 2 times larger, and to scale. (I don't work on very large sheets of paper, and this was the largest size I had to work with).

Here are 3 versions of 'visuals'

most complete version

Here everything has been simplified, but would still give an editor a reasonable idea of the subject and style of the illustration.

I think I am reaching the limit of what I could remove now, apart from some of the lines representing vegetation beneath the giraffe's feet. I don't know if it is too simple as a visual. I guess it depends how well the illustrator and the client know each other already...

 Because of the process, and use of large paper, I had to take pictures - rather than scanning - and once again, I am reminded that I must learn to take out the date stamp that my camera puts on everything!