Cover art

Ever wondered how a book cover got made and why it looks the way it does? All go through a process, a brief, different drafts and then the final art you see. The first sketch nailed down the foreground composition, what followed was a game of place the shark.

About my process, creating drafts and going through ideas is one of the enjoyable aspects on creating art. Illustrating a cover artwork and going through this process will always strengthen the look of the finished artwork. Ideas can be tried out with a few well placed marks from a pencil and discarded or developed accordingly. Having creating hundreds of cover artworks over my professional career I have a good instinct for what works and my first sketch will often be close to what is needed. What follows is a refinement of that with the clients input.

Plasto A New Character Design for The Sustainables Academy

This fellow is a happy chap and he’s also one of the Sustainables. This character forms part of a range of illustrated characters created for a exciting range school resources to educate on environmental issues and matters of responsible consuming. Plasto represents plastic use and recycling and as you can see has a bendable and stretchable physicality to him.

Clients wanting to commission usually present an idea and from that a conversation and then rough drafts follow to develop the idea further. I’ve attached a later pencil draft to show what a final concept looks like and how closely it looks to the final presented to the client.

Four pages to tell a tale.

This nice little 4 page comic was commissioned by Magic Torch Comics. The story I illustrated, Calasraid was part of an anthology of tales. Colourful art, action with a bit of silliness masks a darker story that has brutal ending. Read this story and many more for free at Magic Torch Comics