Ernest H Shepard Case Study

For this case study I will look at the illustrations done by Ernest H Shepard especially those connection to the Winnie-The-Pooh books and A.A. Milne.

CONTEXT AND CONTENT

This is a book cover of the Winnie The Pooh books by A.A Milne and illustrations from Ernest H Shepard, created in 1926. It follows the story of a group of animals including Winnie The Pooh on their adventures and during their problems they have to face. Its form follows the expected conventions you would associate with a children’s book of that time, it does this through its simple imagery, use of panels to separate different sections and simplicity and professional feel to the book cover.

FORM

The colour palette is natural and basic with it only comprising of several key colours – including blues, browns, greens and yellows. This colour palette is then expanded to also include reds and pinks for illustrations further in the book. The appearance of grids in the composition layout gives it a manufactured feel along with the generic computer text but there is evidence of the hand that made it through the style of the illustrations. This is by the bleeding of the background colour so is not contained within the lines, the scratchy inky line and the hatching technique that would be difficult to replicate by a computer making it feel like it was done by hand. Texture does not really feature in this book cover with the image being very flat to the page. The use of compartments draws your focus to each individual part of the page with the structure of the composition focusing on the centre panel and the title of the book.

PROCESS

This book cover is made very professionally that will attract many people to buy the book. It uses a mixture of modern and classic techniques with the classic water colour and inky pen technique combined with the composition and printing given by the computer.

PERSONAL RESPONSE

What drew my attention to this book cover was the unique style and simplicity of it. The combination of a subtle colour scheme and the separation of different elements of the front cover gives the book a professional and expensive look to it, that you may not expect from children’s books in modern times. I like this book cover because it is modern for its time with only certain aspects of it revealing the time at which it was actually created for example the way the page is split into compartments.