Anna gave us some helpful feedback on how approach our illustrations, which included suggestions such as:
Make it bright, use a dominant colour in your artwork
Contrast is good - ie using a dark or black background
Use vivid colours to represent young people and their energy and excitement
Add text from the questionnaire to personalise the illustrations
Relate to the youth as much as possible
As my aim was to focus each illustration on a member individually, I thought this could be the perfect opportunity to use a dominant colour in my artwork. Each illustration would draw on a different participant of WCT, meaning I could use a different colour correspondingly. The idea was to draw each members personality while sharing what quality or characteristic WCT has brought out in them. As this was part of my questionnaire, I was also thinking about including the actual word they described within the illustration, as a way of personalising it even further.
I was aiming to make bright illustrations of the children on a dark background. These are my initial sketches. Although I used a bright, dominant colour, and a dark background to contrast this, the outcome wasn't what I was expecting. This could be due to leaving parts of the body unfilled, which in my opinion gave the image a rather eerie look instead of portraying a child that is excited to be part of WCT.
Because of this outcome I decided to reconsider my use of background. I thought maybe my illustrations would look more lively if I added more colour to them, rather than having a dull background. Again, I wasn't satisfied with this outcome either. I tried drawing a different picture to see whether it had the same negative effect. I used a different colour, corresponding to a different member of the group, but sketched her in a realistic manner to see if this would make a difference at all. Even though I used different shades of the same colour to achieve a realistic feel, I found the outcome dissatisfying and inadequate.
As my opinion didn't change, and I was still unsatisfied with the illustration, I decided I would stick with using a dominant colour in each artwork, but instead draw my protagonists in realistic colours. Instead of drawing them in only one colour, which gave the illustration an unnatural look, I decided to use my dominant colour in the background, and draw a realistic figure in the foreground. These are the outcomes I developed.