Ms. Bloom: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Fiona Householder (2018)

In this project, we had to create a hybrid creature in Illustrator, based on a character from our flash fiction. My flash fiction was about a man named Mr. Maher suspecting his closest neighbors of sending him a mysterious package.

I picked “Ms. Bloom”, Mr. Maher’s favorite neighbor, and secret crush. I made some initial sketches, and told some classmates the animals I wanted to include. Using their critiques to decide on a final design, I began by tracing a photo of my sister with the pen tool, to get the general shape and pose. I then traced cat paws, and a cat tail from an internet image, and added them to the outline. I chose a cat to represent her friendliness, because in the story, she is kind, but evades a deeper connection with Mr. Maher, which reminded me of the standoffish nature of cats. She has a garden, which is why I gave her the stripes and wings of a bumble bee, which I also traced from a photo. In addition, Ms. Bloom wears pink, which is why I gave her a flamingo’s head, which I added using the same method. After assembling the body, I started editing the colors, and adding details by creating shapes with the pen tool, and adding little things with the paintbrush tool. For the outfit, I gave her a headband and belt made out of bubbles, with flowers as accents. This is because in the story, she walks out of her house right after washing the dishes, with soap suds on her arms, and because she likes flowers and gardening. Using linear perspective, I put a counter, with a sink, for washing dishes, and a cake next to it in the background. I put the cake, because Ms. Bloom likes baking in the story. I had some trouble with the counter in the beginning, because it was drawing too much attention away from the creature, but I managed to fix it.