A Cute Little Milkmaid... and Composing for Page Turns

Last night, I finished my illustrations for Aesop's fable, "The Milkmaid and her Pail." I was given the text for the story and assigned to create an 8-page rough storyboard and choose 2 pages or spreads to do finished illustrations for.


Here is the full text for the story:

The Milkmaid and her Pail

Patty the Milkmaid was going to market carrying her milk in a pail on her head. As she went along she began calculating what she would do with the money she would get for the milk.

"I'll buy some fowls from Farmer Brown," said she, "and they will lay eggs each morning, which I will sell to the parson's wife. With the money that I get from the sale of these eggs I'll buy myself a dainty frock and a new hat; and when I go to market, won't all the young men come up and speak to me! Polly Shaw will be that jealous; but I don't care. I shall just look at her and toss my head like this. And as she spoke she tossed her head back, the Pail fell off it, and all the milk was spilt. So she had to go home and tell her mother what had occurred.

"Ah, my child," said the mother:

Do not count your eggs before they are hatched.



Here is the finished illustration for the first page of the story:

And a double-page illustration for the climax of the story:

Lesson Learned: When illustrating for a picture book, pay attention to how your page compositions can assist the flow of the story across the pages. 

The composition of my first page illustration leads the viewer's eye down the winding path toward the girl who is walking off of the page, urging the reader to turn the page to see where she is headed. In the two-page spread, I had to come up with a unique solution to illustrate both fantasy and reality in one illustration. As one of my classmates noted, "the girl's dreams are spilled along with the milk."Thanks for stating that so nicely, Martina!