survey response
This survey response prompted lots of homely warm visions for me, for this I need to capture the golden crust of homemade bread alongside a wholesome, endearing kitchen atmosphere. Taking my feedback from my previous piece I need to incorporate the bread in a way that is captivating but that also immerses you in the piece.
compositional sketch
I began thinking of some compositional ideas and drew up one where the bread sits at the bottom of the page and the smell from the fresh bread rises up through the piece and in the scent/steam trail you will be able to see a wholesome home scene, since this smell is an instant reminder of home.
“Freshly Baked Bread” Final version of kitchen illustration
One of the important aspects of this project is that I’m not to know a lot about the context of the narrative, I don’t know what this person’s kitchen looks like at all but one thing I do know is that they have 3 cats, 2 grey and 1 tabby. This small detail adds a personal aspect while using my artistic licence for the rest of the illustration.
The first aspect of this illustration is completed, the next step for this piece was to illustrate the freshly baked bread and then to combine the two illustrations together to resemble the preliminary sketch.
I drew my separate bread illustration, capturing the golden tones of the bake, and the rustic element by incorporating a tea towel.
The next step for this is to edit it together with this separate bread illustration to hopefully create a fully immersive, aromatic illustration.
"Steam" Experiment 1
This is my first attempt at merging the two illustrations together to create the illusion of a memory triggered by an aroma. I’m finding this very frustrating, it's pretty difficult to achieve what I want with this but this process is experimental and I am going to have to keep producing variants of this until I produce one I’m happy with.
"Steam" Experiment 2
"Steam" Experiment 3
It was a challenging task to accurately portray what I was thinking for this piece, I tried editing it every which way to try and get to a stage that I was happy with. I experimented with several different background tones and many opacity changes, it was clear that the bread needed something to sit on so I grabbed the table from the kitchen illustration as a reference while I experimented.
I drew a nice new table for my bread and began experimenting further, trying to get the balance of highlights and shadows just right so you could still see the kitchen enough through the steam.
"Steam" Experiment 4
"Steam" Experiment 5
"Steam" Experiment 6
"Steam" Experiment 7
After much deliberation and experimentation I finally reached a stage where I was happy with what I had created. I think that the message comes through clearly here and the illustration is smooth and seamless, fitting the same profile of visual replacement and a surrealistic undertone.
“Freshly Baked Bread” Final version of the bread x kitchen illustration
I then began thinking about how this piece would look in my zine. I initially was thinking about working in double spreads to give each narrative a space within the zine. Now, this is a portrait piece and I didn’t want to just have it on a double spread by itself and leave the rest blank.
I grabbed the family Delia Smith recipe book we have from the kitchen and got perusing. She has a beautiful section of her book where she details all you could need to know about making bread, accompanied by small illustrations alongside her advice and recipes.
After playing around with the overlapping recipe pages, I finally produced a landscape spread that will be presented in my zine
"Freshly Baked Bread” Final Piece - close up
"Freshly Baked Bread” Final Piece
This piece took lots of development and patience but I am very pleased with the final piece and how much it has progressed from the preliminary stages.