MATS Part A Week 3: The making of The Fox and The Crow book cover

I love children's books.  To be more precise, I love children's PICTURE books.  I hope one day I can publish my own picutre books.  But for now, I illustrate the front cover for this week's MATS assignment: The Fox and The Crow.

In the previous two blog posts, the preliminary handsketches of the book cover and the inside double-page spread were revealed.  After sketching, I traced them onto the paper using carbon paper getting ready for painting.  [Carbon paper is such a vintage item.  In the old days when computers were not yet popular, carbon paper was used to duplicate documents, either by hand or by typewriter].  I gessoed the paper surface.


Tracing book cover sketch onto to a piece of gessoed paper 

Tracing book cover: Done

 

Close-up of book cover lineart



Tracing inside double-page spread



Tracing double-page spread: Done

Close-up of the double-page spread lineart

I have not used my brushes for quite a while, the snail speed proved that I could only finish the book cover, but not the spread.  Never mind.  As it has already been sketched, I will paint the spread anyway.  In fact, I love the the spread more than the book cover, since two pages allow spacious room to include more characters and create a richer scene.  I can even bring in the DREAM of Mistress Crow who was happy to hear Master Reynard's flattery that she is Queen of the birds.

Below is the finished art for the book cover.  Yet to create the book title by handlettering.

Almost finished ... yet to add the book title

To me, book title needs to be BIG and eye-catching.  While my book cover art is seemingly busy, I have decided that the book title should carry no color (to avoid competing with all the other colors already there) but to be in plain white.

Handlettering of the book title painted in Prussian Blue but then inverted to white

After all the handmade parts are completed, I moved to work digitally.  I inverted the color of the handlettering to white and added to the book cover, inserted also the author and illustrator line at the bottom.

The final art for submission looks like this:

The Fox and The Crow, story by Aesop, pictures by Kris Tsang