jack & jill

Every month, the girls at happy happy art collective have a different group project. It's always fun to see how each artist has a different take and and how the final pieces turn out. You can see Emily's and Lauren's takes here, and check back there later in the month for Tammie, Denise and Muffin's versions. 

March's assignment was to illustrate a book cover for the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. Being a namesake from the title, I've had those verses drummed into my head since childhood, not to mention, always being asked, "where's Jack?" Everyone thinks they are being soooo original ;). Like all nursery rhymes, this one has kind of a dark, odd, pointless underlying message. Why did he fall? Why didn't Jill try to help him? Why didn't she learn from his mistakes but instead, fell right back down, too? And I'm not even going to mention the first aid technique of vinegar and plaster... Anyway, having pondered this little ditty for many years, I decided to turn it into a toddler "self help" book, kind of like Dr. Phil meets Dr. Spock. Hmmmm, maybe I'm the one who needs to be in analysis, ha.

As always, I knew that I wanted to play up the title, because, well that's what I'm comfortable doing. So, I started by filling the space with the hill itself, and filling the hill with the title. I noticed how the hook of the "J" stuck out a bit, so this seemed like a natural thing for clumsy Jack to trip on. As far as color, I started out wanting to make it a limited palette, but I'm not usually very good at sticking to that. My inspiration for color came from this vintage piece by dutch artist Willy Schermele. I love her work! So sweet and she does so much with just a few colors...something I long to improve on, but I have little self control when it comes to my swatch panel in illustrator. If you are interested in any WIP screen shots, I included them in my post over at happy happy. 

Have a great day and be careful fetching those pails of water!!