Working for Children

Collect Imagery for Children:


I collected a range of book covers and illustrations for pre-readers to Young Teens.

Age Groups Chosen:
I chose 7 - 9 year olds (Established Readers) and 5 - 7 year old (Early Readers) as my age groups and the words 'Wild' and 'Growing.

Animals:

I chose a tiger for the 7 -9's and a bunny rabbit for 5 - 7's.

References:




Simple Image:

I chose to draw the tiger in a more grown up way for the 7 - 9's and I chose Copic markers to colour it in to give a bold effect.

For the 5 - 7's I wanted a soft feel, so chose watercolours and ink pen to illustrate this one.

I think there can be a slight cross over in the age brackets, especially when you are going above 5 years old. There are many ways to illustrate for these age groups and different types will appeal to different children.

For the older group I thought they might like something a bit 'tougher' and 'grown up', whereas the younger children would prefer something much softer and gentle. I think this is because the younger audience are still quite close to their parents for comfort and the slightly older group are starting to get a bit more daring and independent so would have different needs.

I don't think all children's illustration should have bright colours, I think as I said above different styles appeal to different children not necessarily relevant to age. I think bright colours help to catch the eye when illustrating book covers but there are many books that have soft illustrations and soft colours the appeal equally to children.

It's an interesting subject of how an illustration communicates to different age groups and I look forward to exploring this further which future projects.