Sunday, October 16, 2011

Book cover sketches


This weekend I started work on a cover illustration for my portfolio. In the interest of tying the task in with the middle grade novel I'm in the process of writing, I'm doing a front cover mock up based on it. This is the idea I sketched up first:


The scene is one I thought might make the most intriguing cover. The two girls are peeking in a neighbors window. The title is just a stand in. (I'm nowhere near choosing a final one.) I didn't quite like the way the figures are dwarfed by the title text. They also seem a little too stiff. The tree shape's not working for me either. After much struggle with pencil and eraser (I was covered with rubber crumbs by the end of the day yesterday) and a little inspiration from Ernest Shepard's Winnie the Pooh drawings, this is what I came up with:



I'm still not sure of the layout of the text and border, but I like the proportions in the picture. I think I'll go ahead and get to work on the illustration in watercolor and ink. Then when I have my new Adobe CS 5.5 (on its way!), I'll play around with the other elements.

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 Just checking in to say I am still alive but less active here, obviously.  You can find my more recent art posts on social media, especiall...