Wild Swans

A Tale by Hans Christian Andersen

For our sequence and narrative project during the second year of my Illustration BA, our final project was to illustrate a book. This book could be of any genre, so naturally, I followed my historical inclinations and chose to illustrate a fairytale. However, most of Grimm’s tales are very short and don’t have much material to work off, so I chose to use Hans Christian Andersen’s retelling of the Six Swans.

But, with it being a creativity project, I set it in the 1930s and chose to split the two kingdoms between Art Nouveau and Art Deco aesthetics to mirror the themes of old money and new money in the story.

Below are my character designs, inked illustrations, colour palettes and final mock-ups.