Andrew Whitson: Watercolour and pencil technique for illustration ...or not.

When I began to consider illustrating the book " Gaiscioch Na Beilte Uaine" "Warrior of the Green Belt" 2007. I started to use a technique which incorporated a wash of watercolour drawn over with pencil.The illustration above was the piece and was quite large for a book illustration. At around A1  it conveyed the storyteller  quite well but I finally came to the decision that it was better to also use pure watercolour for the majority of the illustrations throughout the book as the colours would reflect a "modern" feel to the story that was not possible with the sepia dominant technique that would have prevailed and perhaps made the book look too dark.

However I did decide to mix and match techniques throughout this project in order to create an element of surprise and interest for the reader that went beyond subject matter and composition within each illustration.

Therefore, as you turn the pages of this book you are often met with illustration styles that range from black and white drawings to full colour painting styles to a mix of both throughout.It was a difficult approach to get right as this can sometimes lead to a disjointed feel to the book but overall I feel we succeeded in getting the balance more or less correct.Using one technique for all the chapter headings for instance was one of the methods we used in order to keep the feel  consistent."