Character development is about bringing to life a character described elsewhere. To be successful at this the illustrator needs to be familiar with a character.
For the final exercise in this fourth part, I need to create two different characters of my own choice. Pinterest boards and magazines are always good references for collecting examples of images. I prefer combining digital and analogue materials and working from them. I had some collections of photographs, and illustration portraits, that are good for expressing common affairs, and people’s personalities. Following the brief, I created a few mood boards for the selected themes. For my boards, I went for several themes, babies, and influential people, which after some consideration, I changed to influential women and film characters. Some images I gathered from magazines and newspapers and the rest were made on Pinterest.
Famous people
From the magazines, books and newspapers, I created a board of famous people. I chose them, as they were done in a caricature way, that brought up the character of the person on the first plan.
Frida Kahlo
I liked the idea of creating a board of famous women, women who changed the world, or had their impact on the art and science. I looked at that collection of portraits and images, and I realised there is a field of inspiration for me. Being quite familiar with the art and life biography of artist Frida Kahlo, I thought I could recreate my version of her character. She was an example of strength and determination, her artworks are filled with personal life challenges and creativity.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artefacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is also known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.
I created another mood board of just images of Frida Kahlo, that were taken during her lifetime. My idea was to depict her as a strong and happy individual. She was the person who embraced her culture and authenticity, the example of a person proud of the place where she came from, and her originality.
Mind Map
I started sketching her from different angles. There were lots of pictures to see Frida from the front and side view, but not many from the back, so I had to imagine how she would look from behind. the idea was to depict Frida being strong and happy, when she was creating portraits, or was being able to walk freely around.
I imagined how Frida Khalid would look like while painting her portraits. She always sat with a straight back, with a long layered skirt. Her hair was always taken away on the top, with two French brides on site, and the top of that hair was traditionally decorated with bright colourful flowers.
I found portraits of Frida where she was photographed in front of the arch-shaped mirror. I loved the philosophical part behind it, she was a woman who was trying to figure out herself, looking deep inside of herself, like she was looking for the answers from the deep inside. I found similarities with Frida’s self-portraits in those images, I love the graciousness and mystical energy in them.
I loved that image of Frida with a traditional Mexican figurine, she is engaged with it, and she is proud of her culture and tradition. I wanted to highlight her graciousness and femininity in them. She had that look pointing down, and she was wearing brightly coloured traditional dresses.
Final Illustration
For the final touch, I highlighted colours of the Frida’s portrait, which created prominent contrast for the illustration. Also, I placed the image on a bright red background, which helped me to elevate the passion and energy of the character. In that picture, she looks down, with some sort of playfulness and sophistication. I liked the fact, that she is in the movement there, kind of bringing her chest to the front. The only thing, it is probably lacking some sort of more prominent facial expression. But that is what was her personality all about, thoughtful eye-site and lots of bright colours and lots of philological signs around.
Felicity
As I’m a mother on maternity leave, the idea of creating a board with baby images was personal to me. For the second character, I chose someone little that I’m very familiar with, my daughter Felicity. After having my own child I started noticing all the different characters and developments that babies get during their milestones. I thought that I had quite rich material to work with, tonnes of pictures and memories that I could recreate on a piece of paper.
I gathered together pictures of Felicity I took when she was around 8 months old when she started to be curious about things around, crawled around at quite a fast pace, learned how to reach objects, and shared them with others. That’s the time when she properly started to engage with us, and I thought it would be important to depict that.
For the materials I used pictures of her moving around 360 degrees, she is an active baby, which is perfect for this exercise. For the final image, I chose an illustration where she sat looking all surprised, as her dad was pulling faces to distract her, our way to catch the baby’s attention for a second. She looks so adorable in it, with her little bow on the side and cute smile.
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