If you’ve had your ear to the ground in the world of illustration and whatnot, you may have heard that the Folio Society & House of Illustration have recently launched their 2014 competition to illustrate a classic novel. This year’s addition to their, ever growing archive of mouth-wateringly stunning books, is Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness.
And with a subject matter that rich, who the hell am I to say no?
So here was my entries of 3, evenly spaced illustrations to accompany the text and a graphically simple jacket design.
blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving,
and a misty strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her–
and that was all. The rest of the world was nowhere…”
within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.”
So there we have it! It was a stunning project to work with, the text is truly deep and rich and it was a genuine challenge to provide works that didn’t sell it short. In the end, I decided to let the words do their job with the vast majority of the description and allow the imagery to focus more on communicating the themes of the scene. It’s my belief that images should, really offer something additional to the text, rather than simply supporting it.
I Can’t wait to see the winning design, I’m sure it’s going to be something quite special!
Rebecca Bagley Illustration 