My name is Pricilla Hocking and this piece is ‘The tortoise who wanted to fly’. I’ve been looking forward to this one all through the course – I was keen on attempting the shiny reflections and on trying an involved collage again as I really enjoyed doing collage in the first assignment.
The smaller size presented a challenge at first because I definitely enjoy working on a larger scale. However I feel like I coped with it. I made use of real feathers with this (although, of course I created my own oval discs to go on my peacock’s feathers) which I thought was a good way to incorporate the bird theme. I made my coloured papers mostly with acrylic paints on plain coloured paper, but also used watercolour and salt for tortoise’s skin. I drew the images in the shell reflections to give them a softer look (rather than collage), and also for the birds flying in the sky.
My main challenge/fear was the space for the text. It said pretty clearly to leave it blank but I was toying with leaving some things hanging over. However, too much of the tortoise shell would have been hanging over so I decided not to risk it and placed a paper rectangle over it, completely blank for the text.
Thanks very much to Maggie for feedback during the course. I’ve learnt a lot and enjoyed the process.
Pricilla Hocking
Illustrating Children’s Books Diploma
