Portfolio pieces

Book covers and ideas

I had to include a section for book jackets. Who doesnā€™t love a book cover? And what self respecting illustrator wouldnā€™t want to make them?? And then with the magic of Photoshop I get to mock the up as if theyā€™re real! Itā€™s almost as good as the real thing. Drop me a line to discuss me illustrating and/or designing a book cover for you. Check out the various ideas below.

Portfolio piece

Elf scifi dystopia

So what is this? Seriously what is it? I love fantasy and scifi and dystopian books, so here we are, an idea for a YA dystopian scifi romance type thing. Once I drew out my first concepts a great deal of the story just popped into my head. Of course I probably wonā€™t write it though. For each personal piece I do I often have the bones of an entire novel come with it, and unfortunately Iā€™m too old to go chasing every story-bone Iā€™m thrown. Which is a shame because Iā€™d like to read this one.

Personal piece

His Dark Materials

Iorek Byrnison: ā€œCan is not the same as must. Lyra Silvertongue. But if you must and you can, then thereā€™s no excuse.ā€

Lyra Silvertongue, King Iorek Byrnison and Pantalaimon from Philip Pullmanā€™s His Dark Materials are three of the greatest characters in fiction. In our house we loved them as we read these extraordinary books and missed them once weā€™d finished. Iā€™ve wanted to paint them from the moment I read them, but itā€™s taken all these years to get around to giving myself permission. Of course now that Iā€™ve started Iā€™ll have to do more. Need to do a larger one of Lyra and Pan especially. Painting them at this size doesnā€™t do them justice. Also I just wasnā€™t thinking about cover design here, I just painted what was in my head. Featuring Iorek on his own as striking as he is isnā€™t quite right so I will do this again but making sure that Lyra and Pan get pride of place.

A note on the throne: I used runes from a Viking coffin stone. I used them for the ancient feel although the words are actually not relevant to Iorek. The whale iconography above Iorekā€™s head is my imagining of what the mythical creatures for such bears to be.

Portfolio piece

Liberty

Iā€™ve long wanted to paint the Statue of Liberty for a book cover. Such a strong image which instantly communicates so much. I wanted the illustration to give both a little abstraction and the worn sense of the copper patina to provide a recognition of the erosion of the values for which the statue stands.

Portfolio piece

Down

Trying for a more traditional YA style cover here. Iā€™m seeing this a series style. I will upload a second to demonstrate how it might proceed in a couple of months.

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