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I had several ideas for this cover, all centered around this theme of lots of little people, and one person standing out. I was thinking about haveing the letters of the title created from people’s heads, viewed from above, with something special about the dot in the i. I like how this idea turned out, though. I love repetition as a design element…the people in the background make up a sort of surface design pattern that is pretty cool. I also hand-textured the little people, and wrote the text by hand, which looks cool but may not serve any purpose as a designer.
I’ve been thinking lately, though: I’m not a designer. I wish I had more design skills, but I don’t, and I don’t have any plans for new classes/books/studies any time soon. I decided I’m going to remove ‘book covers’ from my illustration rotation. I love book covers, and love the thought of designing them, but most of the book covers I’ve been illustrating feel very different from my other pieces. I want to focus more on other sorts of pieces for the foreseeable future. I’m unsure what I’ll replace the ‘book cover’ category with. I was initially thinking I would like to practice typography (though that, too, feels more like design work and less like my usual work), but now I’m thinking maybe some sort of spot illustration work? So it’d overlap a bit with my editorial category, but that makes sense since I love editorial work. I’m going to give myself a few weeks, until this category comes around again, to decide what I’ll do. What do you think?
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Category: Book Cover
Topic: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Start Date: 5/1/12
Deadline: 5/5/12
Malcolm Gladwell is amazing…his stuff is so easy to read, and so interesting and thought-provoking, and also makes you think, well sure! That seemed obvious! Why didn’t I realize that? I am pretty psyched for this cover.
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Yay! I don’t know what it is about this blue/green combo, but I love it. It’s kind of old and vintage-y, and also kind of dark/un-cute. Which is nice.
Also! This is my first late illustration! But I figured a last-minute root canal was a fair excuse. Also, in case you were wondering, as I was: root canals? Not really a big deal. Whoops. That was a lot of anxiety over nothing!
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Category: Book Cover
Topic: Sabriel
Start Date: 4/16/12
Deadline: 4/20/12
Whoops! I miscounted a deadline somewhere. This is #30, not #29. Whoo! 30!!!
It’s gonna be hard to look past this super super great interpretation, by Kali Ciesemier. I’m gonna try, though
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Ugh I love this blue. It’s amazing.
All of my ideas for this cover made it look like chick lit, but I’m thinking that’s ok. This is sort of a chick lit kind of book, right? I mean, sci-fi, romance, but a bit chick lit too.
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I had this great idea for my Time Traveler’s Wife book cover, where he’s putting a ring on her finger but her hand is fading away (I didn’t get to that yet in the preview above)…now I am not sure I love it, and have another idea I want to play with. The general concern is that, if I’m just using simple shapes, without any texture/pencil marks, then why is this even being illustrated? A silhouette is barely an illustration. So I have another idea, that’s more illustrative, that I’d like to try…
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Category: Book Cover
Topic: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Start Date: 4/3/12
Deadline: 4/7/12
I keep getting ahead of schedule, because I’m really liking the tablet stuff I’ve been doing lately. Not a bad position to be in!
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A year or two ago, I made a little illustration of the first scene in The Golden Compass, where Lyra, hiding in a coat closet, is spying on a presentation Lord Asriel is giving about Dust. When I was thinking about this illustration, I realized that this older, unfinished piece would be a great starting point. The point of view is similar to what I used in The Amber Spyglass book cover (see below) - someone is watching something from afar, so the scene has this little frame around it. In this case, it’s the doors of the coat closet and the coats hanging above Lyra’s head. Plus using this illustration meant getting to marvel at this awesome Lord Asriel, with his scruffy face and teeny arms.
This deadline also provided me with an opportunity to play around with the brush I found for Photoshop that mimics the look of drawing with a pencil. And let me tell you, that brush is way fun. The only pencil I had to add to the old illustration was the outlines of the coat, and the texture on the doors, and I think both ended up looking like they were part of the original sketch.
Here is what the two His Dark Materials book covers look like together:
I’m very pleased by how similar they look in style! What do you think?
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Category: Book Cover
Topic: The Golden Compass
Start Date: 3/20/12
Deadline: 3/24/12
I already illustrated a book cover for the third book in this trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, so I will have to make this guy semi-related.
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Finished! Ahead of schedule! Lessons learned during this illustration: (1) Drawing fancy silverware? Way fun. (2) Drawing fancy dishware? Way fun. (3) Green is pretty reliably great. Particularly kind of light, airy, yellow-y green.
Some details:
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