Alive

title page art

the illustration in context

the art

the illustration in context

Thriving Family Magazine commission Gail Armstrong to illustrate an article on resurrection.

With the issue published before Easter, the magazine asked Gail to work on two images to go with the feature 'Alive'. First was the piece on the title page focussing on the six stages in the life cycle of a butterfly, Gail wanted to make this a beautiful and elegant image; illustrative rather than diagrammatic. Gail explains "One of the issues with visually describing the life cycle, is the huge differences in scale between the egg on the leaf and the very dramatic butterfly. However, I wanted the image to flow as one piece, rather than magnify a section or separate the stages into 6 individual spot illustrations. My solution was to use the paper of the page to lift and form a stem and leaves on which of the 6 stages are displayed. By using a bright palette of custom-made marbled papers for the various stages and keeping everything else in white, the individual stages can be clearly read. The second image was to come at the end of the article and the client required a more "traditional resurrection image”, of the sun rising behind 3 crosses on a hill. Knowing where the text would sit, I placed the clouds so that they again seem to be forming from the paper of the page with the hill extending across the double page spread, utilising as much of the available image area as possible and giving the image a stronger presence on the page."