Art Wortd Coop

My main passion with drawing is that I want to tell a story. You can easily lose yourself in creating just a simple scene or character design, letting your imagination run wild as you start to form ideas around the people or objects in your image. Where have they come from? What is going on in their world? That sort of thing.

However, to expand on those ideas and to form an insight into the characters' world...to basically tell their story (or one of them)...that, to me, is the ultimate project.

So, this idea of a "big project". What's it all about?

Well, I want to approach this project as an illustrator who has obtained a commission from a publisher. They have provided you with the book and they want you to enhance that story and bring it to life.

I haven't been approached by a publisher to illustrate a story as of yet, and that will only happen if I get my portfolio out there and start fishing. So, one of the things I want this project to serve as is a demonstration of my artistic skill (subjective, I know) aswell as my storytelling abilities, such that a future publisher may be interested. Sort of like an extra "add-on" to my portfolio.

So...what to illustrate? There are so many fantastic stories out there, and it would be a thrill to pick a favourite and illustrate it...but there's the problem of copyright. I have no right to pick a book off the shelf and put my own spin on it.

But what about those stories that are now in the public domain? That have no copyright because they have been passed down the generations, their authors long since gone or anonymous?

Aha...now we have the beginnings of a thread of an idea. The start of something that could be really fun.

(To be continued...)