Book cover illustration

Designing some book covers as part of a personal project. For the Peter Pan (By J.M. Barrie) front cover we decided to paint a night time scene with the text overlaying the moon to draw the viewer eye into the cover. We wanted to include small parts of the story into the cover like Tinkerbell and the pirate ship which draws your eye around the cover and gives the viewer things to spot. We decided to have the sea at the bottom of the cover which adds depth and gives visual interest to the book. We also blended the colours of the sea and sky to create a misty effect and capture the fantasy and far away feel of the book. The different plants around the outside adds a whimsical touch.

For the Jungle book Cover (written by Rudyard Kipling.) We decided to use a warm colours using mostly oranges and yellows. We wanted to include a scene of the story into the book cover so we decided to have Mowgli with Bagheera on a tree branch to make the characters the focus of the cover and draw your eye up to the title. For the text we decided to to place it at the top-middle and uses the same colours on the text as we did in the illustrations to link them together. We decide to make the word “Jungle” bigger to give it visual hierarchy and add a sense of play to the cover. The tree running down the side of the cover draws you to the main characters on the tree branch and brings the whole cover together.

Pen and Ink

We have been working on some illustrations inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. We have design a set of illustrations inspired by the playful and well-known characters such as Baloo the bear and Mowgli.

We started of by sketching the characters in different positions and capturing their movements and overall body language. We then used black inks to outline the characters and add subtle areas of shading with a soft paintbrush. We then created details such as fur and created delicate line work with a fine-line pen.

Mowgli in pen and inks