Editorial Illustration planning for dancing article

After having the second brief given to me, I decided to start mind mapping and pick out key quotes from the article that would be useful.

Following the mind mapping I then began to sketch up some thumbnails, I created 3, the first thumbnail being a ballerina where you couldn't see her face, with cracked limbs, with black roses at her feet. Though my Art Director wanted me to keep it simple and use a limited colour palette I though using black paper and white lining the illustration would suit the brief more.

 The second thumbnail was a ballerina, with her limbs wrapping around each other, the concept behind this was that in the article, and I quote that 'sprained ankles, pulled hamstrings, back problems, neck problems, shoulder problems' (from Tommy Franzen) the goal here was to clearly get across that dancers go through a lot of problems and pain throughout their journey, to do this I wanted to stick to a colder colour palette. I also liked the idea of using complimentary colours. I used blue for the emotion of the dancer, to get a cold feel for the illustration, and as I was clearly briefed to use a simple background, I decided to use a blocked coloured background. I thought a bright orange would work because not only does it compliment the blue, but it can also be seen as lights for a stage that the dancer is performing on.

The third thumbnail was of yet another ballerina, reading through the article was mainly based on ballet and the struggles to keep up with the dancing, I thought to do an emotionally unstable ballerina. In the illustration she is wearing a mask that shows an emotion of happiness, I chose to do a half-faced illustration to see what was clearly behind the mask, to show that emotion can be hidden easily. I chose to have lights above her head to look like she was on a stage, performing.