TURKISH MAP FOLDS:
LIFE OF DONNY
THE PLAN AND INSPIRATION:
Drawing actual maps has never been a strength of mine. I decided to create something a lot simpler on each of the pages. I was inspired by Sara Fanelli's book "My map Book". As you can see (below) the pages of the book are more like labelled illustrations rather than a traditional maps. This really inspired me to create a series of illustrations that were related to my home. Instead of playing with the idea of my childhood again, I decided to create a journey of my cat, Donny, and what he does in his day.
SARA FANELLI - MY MAP BOOK (ABOVE) MY SKETCHBOOK PAGES (BELOW)
THE PROCESS...
After brainstorming ideas, I chose my 4 pages for my map fold book. As you can see in my sketchbook pages, above I did not include all of my sketches in my final outcome, I originally planned to create more pages than 4 but my other ideas weren't as strong, so just kept the ones I thought were more finalised. I have produced the illustrations in the style that I have done for the past hand drawn books as I like the way that my style is heading.
Turkish map folding is a new technique that i had learnt when given this brief, and it took me a few tries in order to get it to work and look neat. One thing that i definitely took from practising was that the thicker the paper, that harder it was to get a neat, clean fold. If I was to use thinner paper, I would not be able to use many levels of collage or thicker paints. Therefore, I decided to produce my pieces onto white card on a larger scale in order to get a more detailed 'map' and then scanned them to be printed onto printer paper. This also allowed me to practice folding my piece, and was able to play around with the order of the book, without ruining the illustrations on the inside.
For each of the backgrounds I used gouache paint. I can be a fan of flat blocks of colour, but often only do this in my digital work so wanted to try creating it in a paint format. I think this worked pretty well. Coloured pencil and marker pen have also been used to add colour and outlines to these maps. I used the coloured pencil on areas I wanted to replicate a rougher texture, such as the rug. A lot of elements in my maps are actually collage pieces, although it may not be clear on these photographs. All the illustrations of Donny were drawn on card first, then stuck to the image. I also did this with books, labels, speech bubbles and plates.
This is a similar technique to how Lauren Child illustrates (examples below). Most of her work is collage and then photo scanned. I think this technique is really effective. It can give some work a rigid, stiff appearance to it, but I think that makes it look great!
Below are my finished original pages
Here is my Turkish Map Fold in action :)
