Paint a cover for a children’s book

Tony DiTerlizzi harks back to the Golden Age.

Every story contained within the pages of a book has a certain mood or emotion that it conveys to the reader. The task as an illustrator is to embrace that mood and bring it to life visually with art.

By far the most challenging illustration of all is for the book’s jacket. In the jacket’s singular image, the illustrator must capture the emotion of the story in such an enticing way that it’ll inspire a reader to pick the book up off of the store’s shelf and leaf through its pages. And if it’s inspiring enough, perhaps it’s then only a short trip to the till, to ring up another sale for the author.

For the final instalment of my middlegrade sci-fi trilogy, The Battle for WondLa, I have the luxury of knowing the mood and emotion of the story – because I wrote it. Regardless, the steps taken to create the jacket image are no different to those I’d use to illustrate another’s words. So in this workshop I’ll take you through those steps, and hopefully give you an insight into how I approach each of my book illustration assignments.