Book Cover: Story Magic

Last year Jolly Fish Press asked me to do the cover for Story Magic by Laurel Gale. It was such a fun assignment, and to celebrate its publication day, I thought I'd do an epic blog post about how the cover came together, and explain the process of working with a publisher. This was also the first commercial assignment I did working (almost) exclusively in Procreate on my iPad Pro.

Step 1: The Assignment

I was not given the text of Story Magic to read - instead, I was given a brief blurb, and some notes. I was told that the cover should:

- Have a magical vibe
- Have a 'hero's journey' vibe
- Reflect a more traditional middle-grade high fantasy style
- Convey stories or storytelling in some way
- Depict the main character (Kaya)

I was also told that the author liked bold colours, especially green, blue and purple, silhouettes and stylised characters rather than straight realism. 

I was given the following book covers as inspiration:

Extraordinary Birds by Sandy Stark-McGinnis, cut-paper cover art by Hari & Deepti



The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill, cover art by Yuta Onoda



I was also given some stock photographs of women the author thought looked a bit like she imagined Kaya to look, and a rough description of her appearance and clothing. 

Finally, I was told that they liked the idea of some sort of embellished drop-capitals in the title text.

To start with, in the original email I was sent, there were two suggested scenes for me to illustrate, but by the time I had the assignment and was given details, this had been reduced to just one:

Kaya has climbed to the top of a large tree and she's looking down on the city of Prima. She looks determined (she's made it through a long journey to save her brother). Per the text: The dopest ended a short distance ahead. Beyond it lay a sprawling city, waves of streets and buildings leading to a giant fortress with towers that soared into the clouds. (...) From her treetop view, Prima had looked enormous and beautiful, filled with colourful houses and towers that touched the clouds.   

Step 2: Designing Kaya

Based on the images and description I had been given, I started to design the character of Kaya. Coupled with the stock photos I had been provided with, I had a description from the author:

'Kaya is slender, scrawny even, with big brown eyes, straight brown hair, a thin nose and olive skin. She wears a dress with long sleeves and a long skirt, often with the blankets she knitted wrapped around as a shawl.'

I did a few sketches of faces, settled on one, and then started to design her costume. I had been told 'traditional high fantasy' but I didn't really know what sort of costumes would suit the world of the book, so I tried a number of different options:



(some of the faces on the right are from my initial sketching. I've combined everything here.)

Then I waited for everyone to get back to me and let me know if I needed to come up with more concepts or not. In this case, I was lucky- they chose costume 1!

Step 3: Rough Concepts

With the go-ahead on the look of Kaya, it was time to start coming up with concepts for the cover itself.



I started with four concepts. The first followed, to the letter, the description I had been given, and then I started to play around with it. For concept 2 I zoomed in for a more intimate illustration, and had Kaya looking over her shoulder, so we could see her face. For concept 3 I sat her in the tree, telling a story to the Listeners, which form a large part of the story. (Books do not feature in the story, all the magic is through the oral telling of stories.). And for concept 4 I turned concept 1 around so we could no longer see the city of Prima, but got a full view of Kaya's determination, framed by the full moon. 

I sent these off, and concept 1 was chosen.

Step 4: The Cover Rough

With a solid direction now in place, it was time to work on the draft of the cover.



Those pink lines are my crop and bleed lines. I always like to add a fair bit of buffer to illustrations that are going to be used as colours, in case the designer decides to reframe or zoom out a bit (or if it is decided to produce a hard-cover copy. I once had to paint in extra illustration on a watercolour cover illustration when it was suddenly decided to produce a hardback book... never again!). So the internal line is the crop line (the dimensions of the cover) and the outer line is a generous bleed allowance. And after that, it's all buffer. In theory, only the portion of the illustration within the internal line would be seen on the final product. 

The placeholder text is a bit ugly - working in Procreate, the text tools are rather basic, so I just put in some rough text to indicate where it would fit.

The city of Prima was complicated, so I worked on that in another Procreate document (partly because it's easier that way, and partly so I didn't have to worry about layer limits. As I work at 400dpi (in case the designer decides to zoom in) I had a 15-layer limit. 





When I'd finished the rough, I did a quick colour study, and sent it off. You'll see here I had taken the image into Photoshop and done some better text. At this point, my suggestion was to give the appearance of embellished drop-capitals with stars (as it had been pointed out the really traditional drop capitals were a bit anachronistic for a story without books.)



Step 5: The Final

Apart from requesting that the Listeners be closer to Kaya, and that the font be less heavy, I was given the go-ahead to start the final. Yay!

I also provided a number of font options, as I couldn't position the stars to embellish the capitals until I knew which font was being used. Here is a selection of the fonts I offered:



(fonts used, clockwise from left: Alana, Cantoni, Memoriam, Harlean).

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Here’s the #timelapse of the cover for #StoryMagic, all done in @procreate (it was meant to be added to the last post, but... it’s been a long day...). This is VERY sped-up. The original@from procreate was nearly ten minutes long, and I’ve reduced THAT down to just over thirty seconds. It would be handy if I could draw that fast (although I might get motion sick 🤣) 💜 . . . #kidlitart #kidlitartist #kidlitillustration #kidlitillustrator #bookcover #kidlitcover #middlegradecover #middlegradebooks #jollyfishpress #timelapseart #procreatetimelapse #process #fantasy #illustration #ipadart #timelapseillustration #artforkids #childrensillustrator #childrensillustration #illustratorsoninstagram #illustration

A post shared by Alison Mutton, Illustrator (@alene.art) on Oct 27, 2020 at 7:06am PDT

It was then decided that the designer would do the text, and the embellished capitals were ditched. These things happen, but I think it was rather a shame; who doesn't want to draw sparkles?

Here's the final cover 
(Design by Jake Slavik)

If I Fits, I Sits

 Gracious, 202 has been a crazy year! I've actually been working fairly solidly, for which I am extremely grateful... but somehow this blog got lost. In an effort to prevent it from languishing completely, let's have a quick new post!

This is my latest Colour Collective post. If in doubt, draw a cat, I say! The colour was 'dark terracotta', which is not a favourite of mine, so I knew I wanted to make it pop with some nice clear blue. And the nasturtiums are in flower in our garden so I thought they'd be a nice addition. The rest of the foliage is shamelessly swiped from a current work project. I have been drawing a lot of leaves and jungle backgrounds so I just popped some of those in here to keep it speedy (I wanted a bit of illustration R&R with my Colour Collective, but I didn't want to spend too long because deadlines. This took 3, maybe 3.5 hours (hard to gauge when you were watching tv at the same time!)

I did this in Adobe Fresco, so there's a time-lapse. I posted it on Instagram, so I'll embed the post here. Click through to the second image to see it.

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A post shared by Alison Mutton, Illustrator (@alene.art) on Aug 21, 2020 at 10:35am PDT

Animal Alphabets: Birds

I recently completed the Birds round of Animal Alphabets over on Twitter. Twenty six weeks of birds, one for each letter of the alphabet - all done in Procreate on my iPad Pro. 

Some of them are more finished than others, depending on how much time I had in any given week. See below the cut for a closer look at some of my favourites:

Animal Alphabets: Sea Life

I completed two rounds of Animal Alphabets over on Twitter in the past year. Here is the first set: Sea Life. 

See below the cut for a closer look at a few of my favourites:

The Lost Stone of SkyCity

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of illustrating the cover for HM Waugh's debut middle grade adventure, The Lost Stone of SkyCity with Fremantle Press. To celebrate the release of the book today, here's a little look at the process I went through.

See more after the break!

Nevermoor

I'd been reading Nevermoor, by Jessica Townsend, which is rather like Harry Potter, only without Harry - and as I always found Harry pretty irritating, this suits me down to the ground. It's the sort of fantasy kidlit book that makes me want to draw all of it, so I've been doing a few sketches:

"Suddenly that's what she was - a living tidal wave of rage and fear. She was not like him, she would never be like him."

"Morrigan stumbled backwards and instinctively threw up her arms, surrendering herself to the wave inside."

Building Practice #3

More sketches of buildings from my holiday photos!

First, we have Knaresborough, in Yorkshire - there are the most amazing chequerboard buildings there. This one is Mother Shipton's Cave (although as I understand it the cave is some walk away, I think this is where you bought tickets. We were just stopping off on our way through, so we didn't investigate the cave)

Next up, and slightly off-script, is a sketch purely from my imagination. It was going to have some figures in, but I worked for longer than planned, and my bedtime sketch was accordingly cut short. 

Thirdly, Micklegate Bar, York. This was just down the road from our hotel, and I walked this small section of the York Wall several times. I also did the whole Wall walk with my mother. 

Next, Chawton, in Hampshire. This is the village where Jane Austen spent the last years of her life. This little set of cottages is on the short walk between Chawton Cottage, where she lived with her sister and mother, and Chawton House, where her brother lived. 

This quick piece is based on a photo I took in Clifford's Tower, York. My photo did not feature a cat, of course, but I thought it needed one.

And finally, (in this set) we have Kynance Mews in Kensington, London, which I for some reason forgot to label. This is what happens when you throw things together when you really should be going to bed...

These were all done in Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Building Practice #2

After sketching buildings from holiday snaps in black and white for a while, I began to be sad that I was missing all the colours, so I upped my game and turned to colour:

I started with the Hartley Mauditt church in Hampshire. Such a cute church, it's all that's left of the village of Hartley Mauditt (and fortunately it had a sign, so I knew where it was!)



I hadn't planned on doing two churches in a row, but my father asked me to sketch our friends' church, St Mary Magdalene at West Tisted. This is a flint church, so very different from the one at Hartley Mauditt. 



Next, I chose an amazing building somewhere in Hampshire. So many levels!



After that, I thought it was time for a thatched cottage. We saw a lot of them in Hampshire, but this one is in Godshill, Isle of Wight.



And finally (for this post) a 15th century farmhouse. At the time of sketching, I didn't know where this was, hence the label reading only 'Hampshire', but when I posted it on Instagram someone very kindly told me it was Goleigh Manor in Prior's Dean. The wonders of social media!



I've actually been having a lot more fun with these than I thought I would! And as I have a lot of material in our holiday photos, I plan to continue. The aim is to be able to draw interesting and realistic houses from my imagination, eventually... but it's fun to make use of the holiday photos!

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Practicing Buildings

I like to draw people and animals, and find perspective and buildings more difficult, so naturally I draw less of them. It's normal to have some things you like to draw better than others... but I really should practice the other things more! In that spirit, I thought I would do a series of sketches from some of our holiday photos.

Starting off easy, with wonky old buildings where the lines don't have to be straight anyway:

Pink-Headed Fruit Dover

When Colour Collective rolls around and I have no time (and also a massive headache), birds are always a good subject matter. For the 'Opera Rose' prompt I chose a pink-headed fruit dove, endemic to Indonesia. Birds have such amazing colouring!

This took about an hour and a half, although that was longer than necessary as my tablet froze and ate my last save (I'm positive I had saved more recently, my my Wacom does like to eat saves. You think you're safe and saved up until five minutes ago, but no, turns out Photoshop is going to recover the file as it was 40 minutes ago...)

Adobe Photoshop 2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13" 

Serenity

This year Colour Collective is recycling favourite old colours from previous years. A lot of the time I have no idea what I drew for any specific colour, but I did remember my illustration for 'Serenity'. It was two Indian girls bathing a baby elephant at dusk, done almost exactly three years ago. It makes me cringe now, as old art has a habit of doing, and I briefly considered reworking it... until I realised that people with as many projects and deadlines on the go as me do not have that kind of luxury. So I kept the baby elephant and ditched everything else. Gosh, my work has got simpler!

I threw this together very quickly, it probably took less than an hour, and it needs more work, really, but for the time I had, it is enough. I do like my little elephant, and it was a lovely peaceful scene to work on while I myself was not feeling at all peaceful with everything I had to do! I try to carve out time to do both Colour Collective and Animal Alphabets each week, with a time limit of an hour, because it's important to do some drawing that isn't work-related, just for mental health (if nothing else, it doesn't have to be perfect!), and it keeps my social media from completely atrophying while I work on things I can't share. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13"

Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo...

... listening to the goss.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Hummingbird

More bird practice. I had a horrible cold, and I'd been working all day and just wanted something cute to draw before bed.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Budgies and Brahma Hens

Bird practice. I needed something fun to wind down before bed during a week of deadlines and colds and blah. 

A budgie:

And a very grumpy Brahma hen, referenced from my book 'Extra Extraordinary Chickens' (Green-Armytage) 

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Aqua Dog Book Launch

I recently worked on a lovely picture book, Aqua Dog, by Lisa Van Der Wielen. Lisa contacted me to do the illustrations last year, and I loved bringing cheeky, determined Aqua to life, and surrounding him with the stark beauty of the Western Australian Wheatbelt. 

Here is the book trailer:

The book is available in paperback, and also a very lovely hardback, through Amazon. Click here to purchase.

Lisa launched Aqua Dog on the 28th March, and invited me to come along. It was lovely to meet her - we had not previously met in person, as with many of my clients all our correspondence was through email - and she did a lovely job putting the launch together.

See more photos below the cut:

Toucan!

I've been practicing birds, and so here is a toucan!

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Baby Cards!

I always like to do special hand painted cards for babies - such a special occasion, it warrants a bit more effort on my part! - and in February we had TWO babies arrive, just over 24 hours apart, so I got out my paints and made these two cards:

The first card was for my friend Tilly, and baby number 2, a daughter - she now has a son and a daughter, plus a husband and two dogs, so they're a perfect little family!

I'd bought the baby presents well ahead of time, just before Christmas - our local toyshop was closing down (nooo!) so we went in and grabbed some bargains - and I'd unintentionally gone all owl-themed. So I thought I'd go for broke and put an owl on the card as well:

The second card was for my eldest cousin Claire, and her third daughter, who arrived the next day. I stuck with flowers for this card. Roses are quick to draw, and I had such a lot of work on I didn't want to be spending ages working on this:

Both cards took about 45 minutes and were done in Winsor and Newton watercolours, Pentel Brush Pens, Copic Multiliners, Kuretake Touch of Stellar pens and some metallic watercolours with no visible brand, that I bought at a lovely art shop in Singapore.

Head below the cut for time-lapse video of me painting both cards, along with some sketches and a closer look at the shimmery metallic paints that aren't really visible in the above photos!

Robin Hood

Last year I did a few Robin Hood themed illustrations for Colour Collective, while the colours miraculously worked with the theme. I don't know how that happened! Where was the hot pink to throw a spanner in my works?

While we were in the UK, I (briefly) saw a weasel. I was amazed by how small it was, I'd always thought they were bigger. So naturally I had to draw one, and I thought Robin Hood would make an ideal weasel. He's always getting out of sticky situations. And the Colour Collective colour was 'Lincoln Green'. Meant to be!



Then 'Scheveningen Yellow Light' was the next colour, and I thought Maid Marian, with her original association with May Day, should be frolicking amongst the daffodils. We saw a lot of daffodils on holiday.



And then the next colour was 'Seashell', which turned out to be the perfect colour for mushrooms. Friar Tuck seemed to me to be perfect as a mole. We didn't see any moles on holiday (I don't think it's usual to see any!) but we did see some molehills.

Chattering Lories

For Colour Collective's 'Cardinal Red' prompt, I was going to go very uninspired and draw some cardinal birds. But then my mother reminded me of lories. I can't think why I had forgotten about them, I was only in the Lory House at Jurong Bird Park two months ago! So I changed my plan and chose chattering lories, endemic to North Maluku, Indonesia. They are considered vulnerable in the wild due to illegal trapping.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. A little over two hours.

Australian Animals

Here are some sketches of various Australian animals, which I've been doing as bedtime wind-downs. I like to have a little time before bed just to draw something pointless. 

This is a forty-spotted pardalote, endangered and endemic to a small area of Tasmania. I hadn't heard of them, but I saw them on Gardening Australia and they were so cute. They also matched perfectly with Colour Collective's 'Turmeric' prompt, so I included it as a bonus CC as well. 

Here is a numbat. They are also endangered, and native to Western Australia. Obviously I had heard of numbats. A lot. I love them.

A Tasmanian echidna. I saw one on David Attenborough's Tasmania and absolutely fell in love with it, so cute. I was filled with a desire to needle felt one, but I totally don't have felting time right now, so a quick sketch was the best I was going to get:

More below the cut: