Character Development

I have a character in mind for this exercise, the story that my character takes centre role in is a children's story, so here I am going to take a close look at examples of children's story characters. 

Rachel Bright: 

Block colours. Rachel Bright's characters all have very big and round eyes, with just black pupils, this is very effective at showing expression. I love her personally designed typography too. 

Tony Ross: 

Pen and ink drawings.Very loose lines and clean bright watercolour washes. Again, as Rachel Bright, the eyes have only the black dot of a pupil, now colour. Enlarged noses and ruffled hair add personality. 

Quentin Blake: 

Tony Ross and Quentin  Blake are very similar in style. What's interesting here is that Blake's characters are sometimes so simple, they only have a pen dot as eyes at all and line drawn noses and mouths. The scribble nature that he works with adds movement. 

Timothy Basil Ering: 

Gorgeous drawings. Unusual in style. Colourful and odd. Quirky characters with peculiar shaped heads that are large in size. Wonky eyes and very large line drawn mouths. So imaginative and different.

EH Shepard: 

Neatly drawn and perfectly accurate. Delicate. Features are very true to to life. 

Charlie Mackesy: 


Ink scribbled lines .The lines are so loose yet the characters are distinctive. No detail in the faces but very obvious outlines. 

Judith Kerr: 

Bold colours. The characters are true to life in their features. The clothing is as well done and attractive as the faces and features of the people. 

My character development: 

Where to start with this! I started by writing down who my character was. Welcome to Verity Vomit...

Verity has been nicknamed 'Verity Vomit' by her 7 year old brother Ted. 

Verity lives in a family unit of four. Her, Ted and mum and dad. 

Verity is 12 years old, with great ambition to be an adult as soon as possible. 

Verity thinks she's the "bees knees" as her brother would say. 

She likes high top trainers, and she had a pair of new bright pink trainers for her birthday. 

She has recently started high school. 

Verity is fairly tall for her age. She has long blond hair which she likes to wear up, although it's never quite perfect despite her efforts. 

She particularly likes chewing bubble gum and desperately wants to blow the biggest bubble ever yet, for the purpose of trapping her brother in it so he will fly away forever! Headline "The boy in the Bubble"....

I did a quick sketch of my first thoughts. Although, these sketches didn't contain the sass and confidence that I wanted for the character and appear too stagnant and uninspiring. These drawings were frustrating a dull. I re-read my character profile and had another go. 

This exercise asks that I adopt their mood, expression and personality. I asked my daughter to model for me and I worked even quicker this time to try and add character in the poses. First pencil drawings: 

Much quicker, much more life. I let go of my fears to get this right or wrong, it helped a great deal. 

Verity Vomit: 

Taking these pencil drawings a little further, I sketched again with a fine liner and added colour to the character. Studying 'Sketch Your World' by James Hobbs, I have taken great comfort from the quick sketches in the 'People' section. They are rough but contain so much life. I wanted to achieve this with my second go. I can see Verity Vomit starting to come to life!

My second character: 

Sticking with the same story. This is Dad. 

Dad's really name is Mathew. 
Mathew is in his late thirties. 
He is slight with the same blonde hair as Verity. 
He is gentle in character. 
Mathew is a Maths teacher, although still has his work cut out with Verity! 

My first sketches of Dad. Also included here is the start of mum, but for now I decided to concentrate on dad. 

Dad, again using a fine line and coloured pencils. Despite dad's gently nature, I tried to capture a cross expression in one of the poses. 

Reflection: 

This turned out to be really fun. I haven't yet developed my people sketching skills in my personal work so this really was an experiment. I learnt here to be quick and confident, the results of sketching this way were much more pleasing. Adding expression is a skill I need to learn, but as a starting point I can see the characters withing the coloured sketches. It really, really helped getting to know the characters before I drew them, having a mini profile kept me focused on how I wished them to look. I also like the idea of the story. Will she really blow a bubble gum bubble to capture Ted? Verity turned out to be the stronger of the sketches, I guess that was where my excitement was at the point of doing this exercise. 

Penguin did  a series of short films of Quentin Blake sketching. I have watched all of these and I am completely in awe of how in tune he is with his characters. Again he works so quickly and with very think black liners. The lines are simple. His characters are full of life and expression. I am in awe of his talent. 

It was really interesting to see the originality of the characters used in all of the artists I looked at for research. Character is everything you have....Point noted. 


Reference: 

'Sketch Your World' by James Hobbs
Quentin Blake short films by Penguin.