Mrs Dalloway for the Folio Society

 

Last year I spent a fair few months illustrating Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway for the Folio Society. Ten illustrations neatly bound in a very nice hard-back book, printed on lovely paper, put together with typical Folio Society attention to detail! Its out next month but here's a sneak preview of some of it. 

 The whole process of illustrating the book proved to be a steep learning curve for me. Lots of drafting and re-drafting and research and late nights, a far cry from my normally quite relaxed approach to illustration. I'm not going to deny that it was an incredibly stressful process, one that frequently left me feeling a bit (for 'a bit' read 'utterly') useless but in the end I'm quite pleased with how things turned out. I feel like the way I work really evolved during the project and I definitely honed my photoshop skills along the way! There are plenty more images to show you but I think I'll share the full illustrations once the book has been officially released. 

(Today is the 70th anniversary of Virginia Woolf's death. If you haven't read any of her, frankly sort of revolutionary, novels maybe now is a good time to try one! I loved Orlando as a teenager despite being faintly baffled by it!)