Illustrations and absence

 Quick doodle, planning for illustrated book, Sam doing his tables, watched by Lucy, pencil in S&B sketchbook

Sam is nearly 5 and addicted to maths (I'd think he must be a changeling if he wasn't the image of his father!)  so I thought I'd do a times tables book for him with illustrations.

He was working out the odds on horse racing with his grandfather last week - having asked what the numbers 10:1 onscreen meant.  We were working out what happened if you put £3, £8, £10 etc on instead and what your winnings would be - he rattled off the answers.  Maybe not quite the way his teachers intended tables to be learned!

This is a preliminary doodle, thinking how to go about designing the book.

And these ............

........... are ideas for showing the multiples for 5x and 3x - the problem is by the time you get up to 12x12, that's a lot of little images!  So how to solve?   Go for simpler shapes?  have fold out pages?   Things to doodle and work out before embarking on the final book.

Then - to work in watercolour? gouache? coloured pencil? a mix of all?

I'm planning to continue the essential elements series - but life at the moment is rather hectic with family health issues and hospitals, so not much time for either that or large paintings hence the shortage of posts here lately  :>(    These I can work on anywhere.

Comments

Cathy Gatland said…
I think I'd have been better at maths if it had involved working out horse-racing odds :)
Great that you're using your waiting times so productively, and as always, super-creatively!
9:46 am
Bridget Hunter said…
Lovely sketches of children.
8:55 pm
Ian Bertram said…
Very Shirley Hughes-ish - lovely.
6:08 pm
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