Exercise A Childrens Book Cover.

The brief for this exercise was to design a natural history book  cover illustration, suitable for 7-11 year olds.

I started out by drawing a spider diagram, to get some ideas.  I tried to think of as many animals as I could, so that I would have a wide variety to choose from.

For layout ideas, I looked at different children’s encyclopedia covers, suitable for this age group.

I noticed that the most important thing was colour, as well as easily recognizable animals.

The book needs to jump out from the others on a bookshelf, so this is where colour is important.

I gathered several images of animals, and sketched a few, to get a feel of what animals I might use in the illustration.

Once I had done this, I moved on and sketched thumbnails of the layout design, I included spaces where the text would go.

The final size of this illustration, would be, I guess, the same as a lot of encyclopedias, which seemed to average at 24 cm x 30 cm, so I produced the client visuals at this size.

I chose thumbnails 4,5, and 8 to produce the client visuals, although I did feel that thumbnail 5 was the least successful, as I wasn’t happy with the choice of animals.

I did not colour any of the backgrounds, as I think white shows up the animals colour better.

I used watercolours for the client visuals, but for a more solid, strong final illustration,  I would possibly use acrylics or acrylic inks.

In conclusion, I think that thumbnails 5 and 8 are the most successful of the three, as they are balanced visually, and the choice of animals works well.