Trees by the River

Primroses in the Path above River Tweed

The Little Hill in April

Shadows on the Path

The Midnight Hare, page 21 rough

Late last night I experimented with putting this particular illustration on to a much paler background and it didn’t feel right at all; therefore I have decided to fill up the pages with colour and keep a specific margin throughout, the same colour as the paper on which the particular illustration is painting (here the margin is taken from another source, so is slightly different in tone). The paler margins didn’t work with having the words within the picture, there were too many things going on. I have also decided to simplify the text so it is sans serif – don’t know whether I will use the one here, it might be a tad “round”, though I like the darkness of it against the background. There is quite some time before I have to decide on what font to use.  But something unadorned. I didn’t envisage when I decided to take on the production of this book how many things would have to be considered – but in a way that is the point of the exercise, to learn during the process.

The birds tail might break into the margin! This way of doing things means that, apart from the two pages which go across the book and which have no margins, I will have to keep the imagery complete within the picture, I can’t have any nice Japanesy cut-offs of the main characters, unless the margin is made specific, which I don’t want – but so be it. We’ll see how it goes.

Dog Violets

Heron by the Weir, April

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

 

Now, of my three score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

 

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

A.E. Housman

YSP 7

YSP 6