Bookcover: The discomfort of Evening
For this assignment for illustration we needed to design a new book cover for an already existing book. We could choose between three different books and I chose the discomfort of evening as you can see by the title.
mock-up
Here you can see a mock-up of the book, which we needed to make to see how it would look on an actual book.
Final cover
Here you can see the final book cover I made. On it
I drew the main character called Jas with a red raincoat because that’s how she’s depicted on the actual English cover and I drew her like she’s bassically crying the river her brother drowned in, to kind of symbolize the guilt she feels for his death. In the background I drew a farm because that’s where she lives and I really tried to give the scene a winter feeling, because that’s when the story takes place from what I’ve read.
Process
Here you can see some of the process of me making this cover. As you can see I basically drew the final drawing over my sketch. Also I used some pictures as examples on how I needed to draw Jas and the farm. I will put the example pictures I used below.
As you can see in the first 2 pictures after the sketch I bassically redrew the traced body of my niece who I asked to pose for me as an example for my drawing. I traced it first so I could have an even clearer example and then basically drew it myself next to it. So I did this to make it easier for me to see how to draw it. Also I used 2 textures, one for the barn en one for the ice, the rest I fully painted in.
Sketches
I started making a few sketches after reading the synopsis of the book to bassically get an idea on what to do. I immediately wanted to take a surreal route for my drawing since surrealism can sometimes give you a discomforting feeling, which fits with the title.
I tried a lot of different things and as you can see they are all based on different aspects of the book, like in the first sketch you can see the family standing over the dead brothers body and everyone seeming to be dealing harder with it the higher up you go, in the second you can see a similar thing but with only the kids(also I gave them crowns since they refer to themselves as the three kings), then in the next one you see jas being conflicted over who she wants to die more because that’s something that happens in the book after the dad wants to cook and eat the rabbit. Then you see jas fully covered in her jacket to hide and a scale next to it (to get back at her decision on the matter of her brother and the rabbit), in the next sketch you can see jas looking at herself in the mirror and seeing herself as a devil to kind of symbolize her guilt. And then you can see a lot of different versions of Jas crying in front of her house and her tears becoming the river in which her brother drowned to symbolize her feeling about being guilty for her brothers death. As you can see I chose the last sketch here for my final drawing.
