When I was choosing an animal to do for this project, I basically knew right away I wanted to do something about birds. When brainstorming ideas, I started thinking of birds mentioned in literature and Aesop's Fables came to mind, specifically "The Crow and The Pitcher" which helped me build a concept, narrative and application for my project.

Here is the first page of scribbles choosing an animal.

My project is a chapter header for a book of Aesop's Fables, this one of course being "The Crow and The Pitcher." 

As I start braingstorming and researching the fable, I start to gather ideas for motifs and illustration to use in my piece.

Warm-Up Sketches

The top is illustration and lettering, the middle is representational and the bottom is decorative.

The top illustration I wanted to keep the lettering simple so the illustration could move throughout the letters.

The representational lettering is based off crow feathers. Not my favorite look but it resembles my illustration style I just don't think it works particularly well for the project.

The decorative style goes more with the pitcher than the crow but with the fillets and serif details it hints at crows feet and feathers without being too on-the-nose. 

Another step of my warm-up includes more detailed illustrations to use the style of my illustration work into my lettering. I pickup on how I draw the feathers, the textures and patterning of the feathers and line quality.

My next round of warm-up sketches were of just the drop cap. this could be a fun direction to go in for the final project as well for some folks. I went with a similar approach that I did above. 

I did these 2 extra to try a better representational version of the feather lettering and the decorative approach was more greek inspired with branchy motifs.