I appreciated the textures of the washes Quentin Blake used in his illustrations for Michael Rosen’s Sad Book. I feel like it evokes the mood and state of the narrator very well. In a pathetic fallacy kind of way, the setting and the weather echoing the grief and loss in the text. I wanted to incorporate watercolour washes in my publication, with the use of the textures the paint can make wet, like edges, blooms and shapes which I quite like.

Spread from Michael Rosen’s ‘Sad Book’. Illustration by Quentin Blake
Spread from Michael Rosen’s ‘Sad Book’. Illustration by Quentin Blake

Throughout the book, Quentin Blake lets the paint bleed into each other, using the textures to convey the wet stormy weather.

Misty forest symbol for lost emotion
narrating something joyful
without the wet background, seems more dry and less washy- maybe
more suitable for dry sunny day?
Textures for incorporation into spreads? It can be repeating element. The mind with its thoughts is kind of wishy washy, motif.