Foundation Final Major Project.

Grandma's Stories

My project is based around the stories my Grandma wrote when I was younger and the memories relating to “story time”, I plan to illustrate the stories and print into a book as well as set up an installation, which evokes memories of story time as a child and the idea of being lost in a fantasy world.  The idea developed from my previous project where I looked at altered books in order to give them a new lease of life, I plan on developing this further by bringing the stories to life on a much larger scale as if the reader has become surrounded by it. 





As I’ve applied to study Illustration at university I want to use this project to gain experience of working to a brief where my work is aimed at a specific target audience, in this case young children, as well as it having a more commercial outcome.


I want to keep the illustrations contemporary and quite simple with strong lines and lots of bold colour, as well as incorporate some areas of textiles ad collage to appeal to children and hold their attention while they have the story read to them.  I feel its also important to pay a lot of attention to the typography used in order to make it easy to read and for children to follow as they learn to read and write themselves. I also want to look into different ways of producing and presenting the illustration and typography, for example the traditional methods of hand drawn images and printing compared to digitally produced images using Photoshop and Illustrator.


For the installation I’ve been looking at artists such as Su Blackwell, Tord Boontje and Julie Arkell to create a feeling of childlike imagination and nostalgia with their use of cut up books, collage and shadows. I plan on setting up a room that evokes memories of being read stories by a family member, I’m using my own childhood memories of reading with my grandparents to create this. The idea is to fill the room with the story by using projected images and shadows, scenes and lines from the book on the walls around the room as well as recorded sounds of the story being told by a family member to a young child.