Posts Tagged ‘Khawan Barton’

This summer, I’ve enrolled in the book design class at the University of Baltimore. Since UB’s summer session is a short eight weeks, the class instruction (and time to complete a project) is a whirlwind. The first project is to design a book for the Rudyard Kipling short story, “The Elephant’s Child”. After several revisions, I feel I’m close to being happy with my cover design.

Since I am not an illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, obtaining art for a project is always a challenge for me. Especially when there is no client to bill for the work. I found some exceptional paintings from artist Aria Eden which I used to create a rough mock-up to present to class. After attempting the first cover, I was told that artwork created for the story itself could not be used-even unpublished artwork. D’oh!

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 1)

Scouring the Web, I found a beautiful sketch of an elephant’s face. The artist added pink watercolor to the sketch to soften the pencil lines. The use of pink gave me a unique color palette to work from to create the back cover of the book. Sadly, a week after first presenting the cover, a comment was made that the illustration looked like a body part that rhymes with “heinous”. Needless to say, this was a bad thing.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 2)

Back to the drawing board, I found myself scrambling. Until I found Khawan Barton‘s fantastic sketches on Flickr. Khawan’s elegant sketches of elephants gave me the opportunity to use a more wistful font choice for the title of the book. The only comment in class was that the artwork needed a little more “meat” behind it. I am guessing this means a little more substance to help support it. The result is below. I’m fairly happy with it, though now I’m not sure about the color of the title in version 4.

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 3)

The Elephant's Child Book Cover Concept (Version 4)

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