I chose to illustrate Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, as I love the magical realism that allows you to understand the complex emotions of the characters in greater detail. My focus was on building a sense of the characters and atmosphere, and on experimenting with typography and design. The soul of the book is in the recipes, and each chapter is based around a specific dish, so I knew each of my images had to focus on those dishes, on their preparation in the sensory world of home and kitchen, where memories are made of big events and small. Typography played a big part to me; characters' words and writing fill the images as Tita's emotions fill the food she makes.
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A huge part of this was how the book is meant to created from the recipe book Tita makes during the course of the story. The idea of this handmade book, pieced together from recipes and contributions from family members old and new spoke to me. I knew that getting some of these in the book, letting the characters' handwriting speak for themselves, would bring a whole new life to the story.
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The end product is very important to me. It is not enough to have some images and an idea of how it might look, if I can put in the extra work to really make the project come to life. By binding the book myself, by hand, I was able to have full control, over the paper used, design and layout, and the quality of the binding itself. I screen printed hardback and paperback versions of the cover, carefully ensuring that they were of a quality I would be proud to present.
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Screen printing was a huge part of the design process, and while only my cover was physically printed in the end, my illustrations are heavily influenced by the process. Each image is colour separated and digitally created in the style of a screen print, along with printed textures to add character. The freedom of digitally collating images speeds up the process as well as allowing more control for refinement.
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I put thought into the other roles my illustrations could play. I'm often excited by freebie bookmarks when buying books, and inspired by these and the wonderful recipe cards that Waitrose gives out, I designed my own forms of advertisement. Individual recipe cards of some of those included in the book would make a fantastic taster of the story, and a few bookmarks are always handy for a book lover like me.
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