Behind the Scenes of a Book Cover Illustration

Life of an Artist

30 Oct

Written By Jennifer Hawkyard

I had the pleasure of being approached by author Luis Arias for a custom book cover illustration for a book that was coming out later in the year and I thought I would share some of the behind the scenes of the process with you so you can see the process when a book cover is illustrated.

1) The Concept

Luis came to me with a very clear concept in mind. He wanted to feature a beautiful golden lioness on the cover of his book. This book would be filled with life-wisdom for his daughter (Julia) and her favourite animal was lions. Naturally I was delighted to be asked to paint a beautiful lion and so I got to work on a rough sketch for him.

2) Rough Sketch

The initial sketch covered the requests that Luis had put forward - a beautiful golden lion and some of the rainbow, aura colours that Luis enjoyed seeing in my work. I did a little nod to Julia by including a child-like figure on the Lioness’s chest.

3) Revised rough

After seeing the rough sketch, Luis shared that he would rather have a deeper emerald green be the main surrounding colour for the lioness’s environment, with a feeling that perhaps we’re in a beautiful, rich jungle. So the sketch was revised to incorporate this request.

As you can see, I’m still working quite loosely and quickly here. It is much easier to make large revisions at this stage than later on down the road when much more painting is done so it’s important the client not worry too much that all the details aren’t in at this point and instead focus on the big picture.

4) Painting and detailing

Luis was happy for me to proceed with painting in detail at this point and so I made my file much larger (allowing me to work in fine detail) and getting into the nitty gritty of the painting. You can watch a timelapse of some of this process below.

5) Final refinements and cover design and layout

The detailed painting was once again sent to Luis. He loved what I created but found the top area a bit too dark, he asked for the forest to be lightened up throughout and everything to be a touch warmer. From here I felt confident proceeding with finishing the painting with those revisions and laying out the cover elements as per the specifications of his publisher.

The final cover was then sent to the client with the revised artwork enclosed within.

I’m delighted to say he was super happy with the end results and had no further revisions. The file was prepared for print and sent to the publishers for text placements.

*The finalised book cover with cover elements included*

Letters to Julia is now available on Amazon

This wonderful book is now available on Amazon (in Spanish) the English translation is coming soon!

Shop The Book →

If you would like to work with me on a book cover or license an existing artwork, please feel free to reach out to me, you can explore my book covers here.

Jennifer Hawkyard

A multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in remote West Wales, Jennifer specialises in creating intuitively led channelled artworks and messages for her clientele all over the world. Her work is multi-dimensional, colourful and imbued with layers of insight, love and significance.

She has worked with best-selling author Kyle Gray to create The Angel Guide Oracle, The Gateway of Light Activation Oracle, The Divine Masters Oracle and most recently The 22 Archangels Oracle. She has also self-published her own creativity journal filled with inspiring artwork and channelled messages to encourage the reader to explore their creativity and intuition.

https://www.jezhawk.com