Paisley Rabbit Cover, Leaf By Leaf (Part 3)

You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Paisley Rabbit Book Cover

Watercolour and Gouache

42 x 55cm

There was a bit of a gap in-between finishing the cover illustration and designing the layout for the book cover. I completed some other illustrations for the same book, and then returned to the above illustration and created some draft layouts to share with the writer and publisher, Steve Richardson.

Four cover mocks up to choose from.

Together we came up with four basic designs and then decided to ask the online public to vote for their favourite. We had a wonderful response, especially on Facebook. In the end the clear winner was layout D, which pleased me even more because that was also my favourite design.

Rough layout 'D'.

Steve and I agreed to follow the 'market research' and run with layout D. I took the basic design and started to play around with the text colour, from black to blue, then eventually to a dark brown.

Hand drawn and painted text blocks.

I mainly concentrated on the text blocks (or boxes). I wanted to make them feel much more organic, in keeping with the illustration. So I began to produce some hand drawn and painted versions of the text boxes and then I introduced them to Photoshop to tidy them up, and in the pencil versions - add colour.

I went through lots of trial and error. The pencil lines, when coloured, looked messy and they didn't create a strong enough edge to compete with the illustration sufficiently. I opted to work with the painted text block and tried varying the corner designs. I felt square cut-aways looked too harsh and in the end I worked up some quarter-circle cut-aways to replace them.

The final cover design.

Here you can see the finished cover design, complete with painted text block and quarter-circle corners. You can also see that I tweaked the amount of foliage covering the edges of the title block and I added some leaves to the bottom block. I also tagged a drop-shadow to the edges of the leaves to lift them slightly from the blocks, thus re-enforcing the levels of depth between leaves, blocks and tree.

That's the end of this series of blog posts. I hope you enjoyed seeing the process behind creating this book cover design. Later on this year the book will be printed and made available to purchase online. Just as soon as that happens, I will post about the finished book and where to get it!

Paisley Rabbit Cover, Leaf By Leaf (Part 2)

Now for the second instalment of 'showing you how I created the book cover artwork for Paisley Rabbit And The Treehouse Contest.' You can see the first part of this post here.

I left you poised to start laying in the basic colours for Paisley Rabbit and the flycatcher birds. Below you can see that stage completed. I tend to take these photos at the end of a day's painting, not stage-by-stage, so in this shot you can also see I have started to define the creeping ivy.

White spaces filled in and looking vaguely like animals.

The following day I removed all the masking fluid, leaving some very pale speckling across the bark. I decided to do that now so I could keep on adding paint to the branches, and gradually soften and darken those areas that had previously been protected by masking fluid. Sometimes I take away the mask too early and there is not much difference in tone between the applications of watercolour. Then other times, I remove the mask too late and it looks like somebody has sneezed all over the painting!

Mask off - may the true painting identify itself.

By this stage I was in the usual tonal/contrast dilemma that all my paintings go through. I wanted to make sure the top canopy was suitably dark enough to make centre strong in contrast. The left side of Paisley is lit, placing the other side of the ivy and branch in relative darkness. I really wanted to push that 3D contrast by matching it to the dark tones in the canopy.

Sloshing lots of paint with a big brush.

I was really piling on the paint, keeping things loose with the hope I could define the leaves at a later time.

Leaves become more defined.

Above you can see how I managed to outline individual leaves, by scrubbing back paint and creating contrasting hard edges where I could, particularly in the ivy. By now I was beginning to think this painting would never end.

Darker branches to create a separation between foreground and background

Finally I'm towards the end of the watercolour (and my wits) here. I was concerned the image would be a full frontal assault of green, with very little breathing space. How could I solve that problem? By adding more green of course! The logic was to darken the main branch of the tree, in the hope of pushing back the leaves in the background. I think it worked. You can see the finished painting below and really get an understanding of how much darker the canopy and main branch have become.

You can also spot all the little bits of pastel cerulean blue gouache and yellow ochre I used to further define the leaves and create a little bit of cool reflected light in the shaded areas.

Paisley Rabbit Book Cover
Watercolour and Gouache
42 x 55cm

Now the painting is finished, the next step is to decide on a suitable layout for the text. Once that is completed I will of course dutifully post the fruits of my labour on this 'ere blog. Until that time, take care and don't decide to paint an overly-complicated series of branches and leaves, unless you wish to loose your sanity!