We asked Dawn Treacher, currently studying the Illustrating Children’s Books Diploma Course, if she would write a little about her latest piece ‘Fiery Fred’. Dawn has written a wonderful piece below, we hope you enjoy reading it and viewing Dawns work. Don’t forget to visit and ‘like’ Dawns facebook page if you are a member – Trechercreatures >>
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This piece, Fiery Fred is my 3rd Assessment piece for my Children’s Book Illustration course. I have painted this in acrylic inks which give lovely vibrant colour. I add a little touch of white acrylic paint to the inks to give greater opacity to the colours. These inks are then painted onto watercolour paper.This combination gives a good covering quality whilst retaining a lovely flow making their application easy to handle.
I took a long time working on different ways to approach this assessment piece. I wanted to create a composition that gave a real sense of space as well concentrating on the dragon and what he had done. I have allowed the foreground undergrowth to almost grow up around the framing of the image to help pull all the elements together.
I love painting dragons and had prior to this piece spent some time sketching and painting dancing dragons so these earlier sketches helped me a great deal in finalising the drawing of Fred. I have really enjoyed working on this Assessment.
I have found since starting this course in October last year that my general drawing ability has improved tremendously. Also my ability to put together a composition has really come along since working on my Assessment pieces. Prior to starting this course I have been a landscape painter for many years and even here I have found the things I have learnt on this course have helped make my landscape work so much stronger and has given me the confidence to tackle subjects I would not have considered trying before.
Dawn Treacher
