Nursery Rhymes 2 (The Rough Drafts)

Below are rough drafts done in spare pages of an old skecthbook.

Jack and Jill.

The arrows indicate where I feel the objects should move to provide a better composition. As you can hopefully see, Jack moved position several times in my rough to try and get his falling appearance looking right and to get that sense of he is pulling Jill with him.

Some of the notes I scribbled include whether Jack and Jill should look like children or more adult, and that I feel these two falling down is the traditional scene; and I will add here that I wished to follow that too.

Little Bo-peep.

My initial rough does not have Little Bo-peep holding any sort of shepard's crook or stick; it simply has her in an elegant pose looking over the hills. My final illustration illustration has her with a walking stick of sorts as I felt this look more "natural".

Georgie Porgie.

This one took me sevral drafts to end up with something I liked and then I did something very different for the final piece anyway. It was getting the interaction between Georgie Porgie and the unfortunate girl he is trying to kiss that was proving troublesome. I knew I wanted to make Georgie Porgie look a bit creepy and chasing after girls.

 

You will notice I tried to keep to elegant poses.


Little Miss Muffet.

This one proved troublesome despite arguably being one of the most famous of nursery rhymes. My intial draft is below and you'll notice I have her outside. However, when it came to painting her I hit upon a couple of stumbling blocks. First, was that a tree I painted in took over the picture and so I painted that out. Second, is what exactly is a tuffet? A quick search revealed that it is a very specific type of covered, padded, stool. However, further research suggests that a tuffet is about anything you could sit on. However, regardless of this, it did raise the question of whether she is "supposed" to be indoors; as why would she take a stool and her meal outside? The left shows my draft, the right is my first attempt at painting it. (as you can see I got so fustrated I painted most of it black!)

Little Jack Horner.

The only thing I started with in this image was the idea of seeing Little jack Horner as a downcast  figure. As you can see from the draft on the left, I was thinking of zooming in on him. However, in the first attempt at the final piece I took a different direction and had him as a huddled figure in the corner of the room. My final illustration zoomed out furtherand had him sitting on a stool, not on the floor.