New Illustration: Flowers in the Attic

"It is so appropriate to colour hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. 'Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.' Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.'

- V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic

Hello!

Today I have another new illustration to share. (If you've visited my new website you might have already seen it!)

Recently I finished reading Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. I'd previously watched the films and enjoyed the stories but I felt they rushed through it a bit so I was intrigued to try the books and discover the full story. I've only read the first one so far, and I'd definitely recommend it. The writing style takes some getting used to as its a bit long-winded, but the story itself is great (if a little dark in places!).

I want to try and incorporate my reading with my drawing more often, and create illustrations based on the books I read, starting with this one based on the characters from Flowers in the Attic.

Throughout the book it is mentioned how the children were previously referred to as the Dresden Dolls for their "perfect" appearance, but now they've been abandoned in the attic like discarded toys. This inspired me to draw the characters as dolls rather than humans, and to draw them from behind so that they're faceless. I've also used a muted pastel colour palette to represent their life without sunshine, and avoided the colour yellow as they "never coloured even one of our paper flowers yellow" because yellow represented hope, of which they had none (I did say the story was quite dark!).

Here's a few work in progress shots and close-ups from the illustration:

I've started to re-design the layout of this a little in order to create a design for a book cover, which I may share on here soon too.

In complete contrast I'm now reading Alice in Wonderland and plan on doing a mini project based on that very soon.