I entered my first illustration competition at the end of 2017, Tragaluz' International Illustration Award. The brief required me to choose a page from a book I had always dreamed of illustrating.
As a child I totally adored Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I couldn't decide which of the three books to illustrate, so I chose one page from each!
Here is my illustration for the first book, The Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in the U.S.). I chose the scenewhere the young heroine Lyra is riding under the aurora on the back of Iorek, a giant warrior bear.
I created the illustration using a mix of traditional and digital media, creating different elements in watercolour and goauche, bringing it together and finishing in photoshop. Above is my original goauche painting of Lyra and Iorek. Below are some watercolour experiments I did to try out possible effects for the northern lights in the night sky.
You can also see the page I chose to illustrate below. This was such an inspiring project for me. It really pushed me to experiment with media and combining media in new ways. You can view the outcome for the second book here https://steemit.com/art/@kristenbruce/dream-project-continues
I will post my outcomes for the third books in a later post. :) Thanks for checking it out!
