Moira Millman | United Kingdom
Dotty’s Day of Wonder is a picturebook created as part of my Masters Stage Project for the MA in Children’s Book illustration at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.
Dotty the story’s protagonist lives up high in a tower block with her mum and is bored one day. Looking for a distraction from the television, she unzips her new pencil case and after being initially rather unimpressed is surprised to meet some new friends who take her on a creative journey and ultimately encourage her to make a connection with the natural world outside.
The idea for this story came from my personal experience of living in a flat in London for 10 years and often yearning for a garden of my own. During lockdown I began thinking about children who lived in the city and were unable to access nature.
I think it is so important to encourage children to become curious about the world around them, to appreciate the wonder of nature and to engage them in creative pursuits.
My work has a playful approach and I enjoy using anthropomorphism as a device; turning ordinary objects into characters. In this story, stationery items are transformed into insects who each play a role in helping Dotty create an art garden indoors, which leads her to explore the outside world.
This dummy book is a mix of pencil roughs and colour artwork.
The final artwork for this project is created with a mix of analogue and digital techniques. Pencil drawings, printed patterns and printmaking textures are scanned, assembled and coloured digitally in Photoshop. The illustrations are created with a limited palette of 3 colours; blue, yellow and red which evokes a screenprinted technique.
Education:
Cambridge School of Art - Anglia Ruskin University
MA Children's Book Illustration
Graduation: 2022