Designing some book covers as part of a personal project. For the Peter Pan (By J.M. Barrie) front cover we decided to paint a night time scene with the text overlaying the moon to draw the viewer eye into the cover. We wanted to include small parts of the story into the cover like Tinkerbell and the pirate ship which draws your eye around the cover and gives the viewer things to spot. We decided to have the sea at the bottom of the cover which adds depth and gives visual interest to the book. We also blended the colours of the sea and sky to create a misty effect and capture the fantasy and far away feel of the book. The different plants around the outside adds a whimsical touch.

For the Jungle book Cover (written by Rudyard Kipling.) We decided to use a warm colours using mostly oranges and yellows. We wanted to include a scene of the story into the book cover so we decided to have Mowgli with Bagheera on a tree branch to make the characters the focus of the cover and draw your eye up to the title. For the text we decided to to place it at the top-middle and uses the same colours on the text as we did in the illustrations to link them together. We decide to make the word “Jungle” bigger to give it visual hierarchy and add a sense of play to the cover. The tree running down the side of the cover draws you to the main characters on the tree branch and brings the whole cover together.

Drawing elderly people. Experimenting with colours and line work.

One of the things we love about illustration is designing characters. We are currently drawing elderly people in different scenarios and everyday life. From going to the seaside to reading the newspaper and walking to the shop. We use simple line work to capture the character of the people and use a fine line pen to create subtle details.

A black and white line illustration of an elderly couple enjoying tea and cakes. In fine line pen.

We decided to keep the colours simple, by only adding a few colours in coloured pencils and leaving some parts white. We wanted to keep the delicate and simple line work, so we kept the colour palette simple to highlight certain areas of the illustration.