Visual Book General Layout

The idea of this visual book is to combine water color ink painting with calligraphy, to portray a traditional Chinese folk lore. The book will have long-edge binding so there’s no middle edge that might break the graphic illustration. Each spread is a painting by itself, accompanied by the old scripts that tells the story, and a page number.

Spread 1: Two Hundred Miles North lies a mountain named Fajiu, veiled by millions of mulberry trees

Spread 2: In it, resides a mythical bird. She has the build of a crow, but decorated head, snow beak, and scarlet claws. She claims to be Jingwei.

Spread 4: Nüwa ventured east to visit the ocean

Spread 5: The dragon of the Eastern ocean was jealous of her charisma. He unleashed rogue waves to drown her.

Spread 6: It was then she became Jingwei

The full translation of the story is below:

1. Two Hundred Miles North, lies a mountain named Fajiu, veiled by millions of Mulberry trees.
2. In it, resides a mythical bird. She has the build of a crow, but decorated head, snow beak, and scarlet claws. She claims to be Jingwei.
3. She was the youngest daughter of the Shennong — the deity of the five grains. Her was Nüwa before she was Jingwei.
4. One day, Nüwa ventured east to visit the ocean.
5. She was drowned by the ocean and never returned.
6. Her soul became Jingwei.
7. Since then, Jingwei picks up pebbles and branches from the West mountain to fill the Eastern ocean.
8. This is how the river of Zhang became separated from the ocean.

I plan on including this translation of the story to the back of the cover page so that people who do not read mandarin can still understand the story.