In my Digital Solutions for Illustration class, we were tasked to illustrate a dust jacket for a classic novel. I chose the children’s book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett not only because I enjoyed that book as a child, but also because it was a good match for my illustration style.

I had initially shortlisted both The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows for the project, but I ended up going with the former. Here are the preliminary thumbnails I sketched out for both titles.

My professor and I agreed that the middle one would be the best, but to make it different from the regular book covers that show the character Mary entering the garden, I decided to flip the perspective and depict her peeping into the garden.

This is the polished sketch I came up with, using the old school continuous illustration throughout the entire dust jacket layout.

Here are some of the color studies I came up with.

After deciding on a color scheme, I went ahead and did the initial rendering of the dust jacket.

We were also instructed to add fake textures and stickers to give the book a “worn in” look, as if it had been handed down from secondhand shops and libraries and from owner to owner.

Here are some photos of the actual printed out dust jacket, wrapped around an old library book.

Thanks for stopping by! :)