Inside the Illustration

Cover + Spread 3 : Cardinal

Since this is the cover, it was obviously the most time-consuming page to illustrate right? Wrong…this page was one of the quickest and easiest that I did. Also, I was not sure this would be the cover at the time that I drew it - probably a good thing. The composition is very simple, just a boy pointing at a cardinal in a tree. Having lots of negative space in the background meant a lot of flexibility with where to place copy, and ultimately a lot of room for the elements that would inhabit the front cover (title, author, etc.)

I did the initial line drawing with a graphite pencil on white paper. I colored in the drawing with colored pencil, blended slightly with a Q-tip, and finally outlined with a Sharpie fine tip marker. The vertical lines that are present are from the texture of the paper. I scanned the illustration, did a little photoshop / post-processing work, and finally formatted bleeds and copy in Adobe illustrator. 

Hardest part: The tree branches 

Easiest part: The boy in the suit 

Favorite part: The cardinal of course!