Methodologies In Children's Book Illustration (Sara Fanelli)

Children’s book illustrations comes in many different styles, ranging from cute drawings to obscure visuals that helps brings the essence of the story’s narrative to the readers. The methodologies in children’s book illustrations are all varied, usually stemming from the style of the artist who is creating the illustrations for the children’s book. The majority of these are usually traditional painted visuals, as well as digital pieces, although that doesn’t restrict them from using any medium at all.

Sarah Fanelli’s technique in creating her illustrations for children’s book uses collage as her primary tool to produce bizarre, yet interesting and appealing visuals and broken away from the traditional way of illustrating for children, by using cut-outs of photographed and photocopied eyes as her textural interests and style. Her methodologies is ‘photocollage’, by adding a human element that is recognizable (eyes, nose, teeth) to any drawing, to create abstract compositions. 

‘Argus the monster with 100 eyes’, Mythological Monsters, 2005, Sara Fanelli

Experiments using Fanelli’s technique of using photographed and photocopied eyes on my simple drawings of characters on coloured backgrounds, making each one unique and somewhat absurd and appealing at the same time. The eyes is what give the characters life and there was very little effort in drawing them, as they consists of quick, simple scribbles to create their arms and legs, which relates to the quote by Fanelli, (1) “Scribbles, often have a visual function – they appear where I want some energy in the picture, but not too dominant.” 

Another experiment using the ones I did earlier but mixing the character’s heads and bodies with one and another, generating new characters and surreal combinations. This idea can relate to Anthropomorphism in a way, where we add human elements to other things rather than animals which is always a popular choice. In a way this experiment can relate to ‘Absurd Anthropomorphism’, where we give human behaviours instead of physical human features to unexpected objects, such as the artist Edward Lear, whose poem, “The Table and the Chair” consists of two unexpected characters, the table and the chair with human behaviour. Both Fanelli and Lear uses absurdity for their characters, making them unconventionally funny and to surprise the readers (given that Fanelli uses this a lot to appeal children by surprising them).

Experiment based on Edward Lear’s characters from the poem “The Table and the Chair”. Lear’s characters does not have any form of physical human characteristics, which can be hard to identify as characters visually, unless they speak. Here is to demonstrate that by giving them human like features such as arms and legs, regardless whether they do not speak, they show to the audience signs of activity and characteristics. Without these we would simply see them as objects, nothing more. We as audience have gotten used to identify things with limbs as characters, in film, television, illustration (especially in children’s books), regardless how cliché or obscure they are, relating to my earlier point of ‘Absurd Anthropomorphism’, but more of a physical aspect than a behavioural one.

References

(1) Robins

Bibliography

Robins, G. Books for Keeps, The Children’s Book Magazine Online [Online] Date Accessed: 1^st Nov 2015. Available from: http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/195/childrens-books/articles/the-dream-like-images-of-sara-fanelli

Images

Mythological Monsters, 2005, Sara Fanelli [Online] [Date Accessed: 1^st Nov 2015] Available from: https://simonsterg.wordpress.com/tag/sara-fanelli/