I started this process by brainstorming ideas and gathering reference material. The title of the book – Animals from around the world – immediately made me visualise a cover incorporating various animals and the Earth. I already had lots of animal images from my primary school teaching resources and so I sat with my art materials around me and played with ideas, inspired by the images.
I also had a look around bookshops at natural history books of a similar subject and aimed at children aged 7-11. I noticed that many of these books used ‘doodle’ style images with a limited colour palette. As I knew I needed to create three colour visuals, I decided to try something like this for one of my visuals; less detail, busy cover full of doodles, and using only a select few colours.
I wanted to try more minimalist covers and continue to combine my comfort-zone detailed style with something different. I came up with some thumbnail ideas using the Earth as a focus and then surrounding the Earth with animals that were more detailed. I spent some time experimenting with a blockier style of drawing the Earth and some of the animals and found that the panda worked really well for this, due to the lack of colour too. I had some ideas about using a close-up animal eye and use the Earth as the pupil and iris.
This seemed to look better with birds, because the textures of the feathers and sharp shapes contrasted with the soft, round shapes of the Earth.
I tried a quick doodle idea with only a few colours and quite liked the effect, so decided to create a colour visual for this. It’s not my usual style and I wanted to try something different.
It took a few trials to arrange the animals how I wanted them; throughout this process I was also considering which animals I would add more detail or colour to. For example, in the final visual, I placed the frog and the tortoise on either side facing the text to balance the image. I also aimed to have a mixture of animals and make them recognisable. I think the scorpion or the elephant could have more detail added to balance the image more.
I tried the image on a black background, which I really like as it brings all the doodles forward. I used a square format (20x20cm – which could be scaled up as appropriate) and there is space around the circle for author and publisher details (preferably in one of the other colours to stand out against the black).
In the final version, I would use different thicknesses of black or grey fine liners to add some more detail to the animals, but I would want to keep the minimal, doodle style.
The panda colour visual is probably my favourite. The Earth was outlined in fine liner then I used coloured pencils to fill in the shapes. I went for a blocky style, with more detail for the panda. I think the Earth could look better if the shapes were printed with bright paint or ink, maybe with the aim of looking more haphazard. Looking at the image again, I wonder if the orange background could be brighter. Again, this was a square format and there is space above and below the image for the title, author and publisher’s details.
The final colour visual was the owl eye. I decided to make the eye stand out with bright colours and a patchy painting style, then do the sharp, feathery details with black fine liner. I’m pleased with the visual but I don’t think it looks good for a children’s book cover; it’s quite intimidating and dark. Also, the title, author and publisher’s details would have to go over the top of the feathers, which might make the image more difficult to read. I think the text would have to be yellow, blue or green, to work with the illustration.
Jade's OCA Learning Log 