The Creation of Archie

Before starting to design Archie, I searched through children's books and online tutorials, trying to understand the techniques and tools used to illustrate children's books. Two of the most common tools used are watercolour and online software. Although I have dabbled in digital art, I have always trusted my ability to wield a pencil more. Thus I decided to try my luck with watercolours, a medium I had never used before.

After a lot of scrabbling around for loose change, I bought a set of watercolours, brushes and paper with which I could experiment. Understanding how watercolours work took some trial and error but slowly I began to get the hang of it.

Designing the main character of a children's book is at times an arduous task. The difficulty lies in thinking like a child but drawing like an adult. Character expressions are all to difficult, a slight tilt of the eyebrows may make a character seem sad instead of angry. Too many lines and details may complicate emotions, and quickly render a character unrelatable.

When first sketching Archie, I drew elaborate snowflake designs, which although perfect in pencil, could not be achieved in paint. This allowed me to rethink my transfer of skills and try to expand upon them.

From this I began to design a colour palette. Now snowflakes are generally white but given that this is for a children's book, I wanted to use brighter vibrant colours. I decided on blue as I could vary the darkness and give some life to Archie. In the end this is what I came up with:

Although this is the closest I have come to finishing Archie, I have yet to fine tune all of details before repainting on paper specifically designed for watercolour.