Exercise 24: A Children’s Book Cover

In this exercise, I was asked to produce a cover illustration for a natural history book aimed at children ages 7-11. The title of the book was Animals from Around the World. The illustration needed to encourage children to choose the book from a library shelf or in a store. I had to draw up three ideas as coloured client visuals and include information on the final size, format, and where type will be positioned.

I began by looking at existing children’s book covers in order to find themes and similarities between them, and to ensure I would be meeting my target. Luckily, in Exercise 22 I had touched slightly on children’s illustrations whilst exploring the watercolour medium, so I had a slight idea of how the covers would look. I created a Pinterest board and filled it with examples of illustrated front covers. Whilst looking through the board, I took some notes on patterns I noticed throughout. I was focusing on how characters – especially animals – were depicted, the other content featured, how type was used, and consistencies in style between artists.

When looking at the notes I made on the content of the Pinterest boards, I noticed the following recurring themes:

• Handwritten, playful fonts – often incorporated into the illustration itself
• Variation in size and shape of text
• Very stylised drawings
• Simple colour schemes, only a handful of colours used in each illustration
• Generally light, bright, soft colours
• Lots of pastels and muted tones
• Emphasis on textures – natural ones especially
• Simple, uncluttered scenes. One or two objects, lack of background, very basic focal mechanics
• Lots of animals, nature, fun characters – animals that are characters themselves
• A lot of empty space used to draw in the eye and create emphasis

The majority of the illustrated books I could find on Pinterest seemed to have educational leanings, but I did want to specifically look for nature and natural history books, in order to see if they were any different. The key differences I noticed were the usage of text – often the text was capitalised or bold rather than being more handwritten and illustrative – and that the focus of the images was the text itself, rather than any characters.

Based on the findings from my research, I decided to use either watercolour, collage, or digital mediums to create my final illustration. These mediums seemed the most present in the illustrations I looked at, and they lend themselves to the styles and colours commonly found within children’s books. I had also begun getting ideas for content for my illustration, so my next step was to explore these further.

The brief of ‘Animals from Around the World’ is quite generalised. There are so many animals in the entire world that could be featured here. Initially, when hearing this title, my brain conjures up standard zoo creatures – lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes, elephants, etc. However, the majority of these animals are from the Sahara desert, which doesn’t quite meet the ‘around the world’ brief. In order to counter this, I wrote out 6 of the 7 continents – accidentally forgetting about Antarctica – and began jotting down animals from each of them. At first, I picked mostly well-known mammals. Then, I went back and added reptiles and birds, and some fish too, and ensured I wrote some slightly more obscure options.

Young children often gravitate to what is recognisable, so it is unlikely they will pick up a book decorated with animals they haven’t ever seen before. But, likewise, the appeal of a natural history book is that it features educational and new material, and parents are also involved in the process of buying children’s books. I felt it was important to include a mix of well-known and lesser known animals, to appeal to everyone involved.

My shortlist of relevant animals was as follows:

Africa – Lion, Elephant, Giraffe, Zebra, Crocodiles, Ostrich
Asia – Panda, Tiger, Elephant, Orangutan, Komodo Dragon, Hornbill
Europe – Fox, Badger, Moose, Squirrel, Bat, Salamander, Owl
North America – Wolf, Bear, Bison, Polar Bear, Eagle, Alligator, Snakes
South America – Llama, Sloth, Anteater, Monkeys, Toucan, Macaw, Piranha, Iguanas
Oceania – Koala, Kangaroo, Kiwi, Emu, Snakes, Kookaburra

I then collected reference imagery for each of these animals, in order to get a feel for them. I had several ideas for layouts and narratives at this point, so I created some thumbnails and began sketching. My first idea was to have a stage with a variation of animals on it, and a banner above stating ‘animals around the world’ – almost like a world showcase. The second idea I had was to do a diagrammatic illustration showing where each animal is from on a globe. My third idea was to pick one feature character for each continent, and to draw them on the front cover, imagining that they would feature throughout the book as characters teaching you about where they come from and the other animals that you can find in their homes. These characters would tell the story, so to speak, and the cover would be where you first meet them.

My fourth idea was based off a realisation I had while collecting reference material that there are a lot of variants of similar – or the same – animals throughout the world. There are numerous examples of this: Indian and African elephants, Bengal and snowy tigers, variations on snakes and birds and even bears. I thought it would be cool to see these animals looking in the mirror and a regional counterpart to be looking back. I struggled with developing this idea, however, and ultimately didn’t progress with it. My final idea was to illustrate a simple cover with text as the focal point, as seen in the natural history books I researched, featuring a selection of animals around the text.

My favourites of these ideas were the diagrammatic illustration, the animal characters telling the story concept, and the simple natural history book design. I tried to develop these ideas further but was struggling to do so on paper. I switched over to Procreate, where I have a bit more freedom to cut and paste and change where things go. In order to do this, however, I needed a canvas size. I Googled the most common children’s book sizes, and picked 3 that I thought would fit my ideas best: 8×10 inches, 8×8 inches, and 10×8 inches.

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After sketching out rough ideas and placements, I decided to sketch the animals on paper before scanning them in as the basis for my line visuals. This gave me a chance to draw the animals in several different styles, and in varying amounts of detail. I decided to begin with my world map idea, so I focused on creating ‘headshots’ of each of the animals I would be featuring. I picked two from each region, ensuring I had a healthy mix of well known and slightly more obscure creatures throughout. Once they were scanned in, I created a simple line visual and made some slight changes to where various elements were placed. I also tried out some different text placements until I found one I was happy with.

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Next, I began adding colour. I found this part of the process quite difficult. It was less that the idea of colour blocking was hard, and more that I wasn’t sure how much I needed to communicate. I didn’t want to do too much at this stage, wanting to avoid wasting my time on perfecting the colour visual trying to keep it from looking artistically ‘bad’. However, I also felt that without adding the textures, shading, and detailing that I normally would put in an illustration, much of the image would be lost. Looking at the final colour visual as a stand alone illustration, I hate it – but it isn’t a final illustration, there’s a lot more work that I would put into it, and that’s something I found hard to accept. Leaving the work unfinished and ‘bad’ was hard for me.

I moved on, nonetheless, to the 6 characters design, essentially repeating the process as above. I used the same sketches as I did for the headshots, and drew bodies onto them in Procreate. This step probably could’ve been done with a bit more precision and care – I think I was overwhelmed with having 3 colour visuals to finish, and I was very cautious about not spending too much effort and energy on each piece. I was thinking that, if I was working with a client, they would pick from the 3 the concept they enjoyed the most, and I would go back and do more sketches and studies to perfect my finalised designs. This actually ended up being my favourite final design, so I feel like I’m slightly more critical of it and of my process.

For my last colour visual, I wanted to do something a bit different. As I was unsure whether I would use collage or watercolour for the final illustration, I wanted to give an example of how that might look. Creating a colour visual for collage is very difficult, as I discovered. In future, I think I’ll most likely create a colour visual like the ones above, and then use collage techniques to fill the spaces. My idea was that the finished illustration would look somewhat like the work I produced in Exercise 22, but I feel like the final colour visual here looks rushed and messy. I almost feel like I simultaneously spent too long and also not enough time on this piece. I love the concept and the idea behind it, but the half-finished execution does not look great. I also, upon reflection, dislike the colour scheme I used.

This exercise was overwhelming due to the amount of content required and my feeling that nothing was done to a high enough standard. I’m struggling to find a balance between enough and too little, which I think is something I will hopefully get a handle on over time. I have a tendency to overwork myself and give more than I need to, and doing anything less than that feels inadequate. When I have a brief like this, one that requires multiple unfinished (or finished, for that matter) pieces of work, I need to figure out how to distribute my time and decide which parts are important to perfect and which I can let slip a little. Hopefully, though, this is something that will come through practice and further engagement with similar briefs.

From the perspective of the brief, however, I absolutely loved this exercise, and I enjoyed both getting to illustrate animals and create content for children. Illustrating in this style and for this audience is something I would love to carry on with, and in some ways aim to do long-term. Figuring out my style and how I like to draw various things is exciting, and learning that I enjoy drawing animals this much was great! I just wish I could be more okay with my unfinished work. Staring at it feels like a challenge, and I just want to hide it from the world. This is a good but difficult thing to do for me, for sure.

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