This week in my Children’s Book Illustration class we looked at the book Animal Orchestra by Scott Gustafson. Published in 1995, the book shows a “maestro” toucan getting a bunch of animals together to play in an orchestra. This illustration was my favorite of all the pages. Each page is done in the same style of painting, which gives the book more of a fine art feel. In class we were told that individual illustrations from the book’s pages have been printed on things like postcards and dishes. This also is more of a fine art practice. I chose this illustration because I’m interested in creating children’s books, and I like to explore all the different styles in which they have been done. More of Scott Gustafson’s work can be found at his website: http://www.scottgustafson.com/
He has a lot of cool classic fairy tale illustrations that are worth checking out.
For some reason my eyes only focused on the kangaroo and thought all the animals around it were kangaroos too. Then I took a closer look and noticed there's Koala bears and opossums. I think I only focused on the Kangaroo more was because it was the largest and smacked right dab in the middle. What I liked about the piece was how well the texture of the furs were drawn. It looks really soft, which reminds me of the children books that let you feel different types of textures.
ReplyDeleteThis piece just reminds me of a book I would be reading with my grandma way back when I was little. The variations of the size of the animals is just so cute, I mean who doesn't love any kind of baby animal. My favorite part of this though has to be the hardness of the animal drawings and then the softness of the background. It almost looks as though it could have been water colored.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good one... I really like the background color with that sort of tattered marble effect. For some reason kids seem to love seeing animals doing human things; which is pretty great for an illustrator because there's a whole other world of clever possibilities (such as the possums hanging upside down with the French horns).
ReplyDeleteAlthough the animals are doing "human things", he still to shows the animal behavior too. They're not stiff, it's lively and fun.
ReplyDeleteIf I went to see an orchestra....this is what I want to see!
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