One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Here is one of my original thumbnails, from a selection I chose this idea to develop into a cover.

As you can see there have been various changes and developments along the way. 

So this was my final entry to the Penguin Design Award.... Combining both printmaking and digital technology. This was obviously an uneasy task as printmaking takes much time and planning. I also find that once I  convert a purely hand rendered and crafted piece of work into a digital file, a new perfectionist kind of view of my work appears. Daunting me with new worries and issues that I had never considered before, but I think that this is all down to the sudden unrestrained freedom found in using a computer. However I am pleased with the simplistic design, and hope that it conveys what I was initially attempting to achieve. I added colour after etching, using the offset machine, which was very exciting and efficient... once I had made the stencils!! 

Thanks for taking an interest :)

Looking peachy!

After finishing two book covers, I had one left to complete... in the shortest amount of time (as I had underestimated the workload and run over my rough schedule on the first two). The last book cover was also the most important, as it was to be incorporated into the Penguin Design Award. Selecting the title to design was easy, when I heard that James and the Giant Peach was an option. Who doesn't love Roald Dahl? And the title was already filling my mind with fantastical imagery, having read the book as a child. I produced many thumbnails of my ideas, here are a couple...

Following the success of my rubber stamps on the Barcelona book cover, I decided to return to this idea of image making. So I selected one of my first ideas, as I thought it would reproduce well using my new found technique, (thumbnail 4) by building up the flock of seagulls.  It is also quite a quick process, once I have carved the rubber stamps, because from then on it's just repetition. However on this occasion once I got stuck into the carving, I was heavy handed and managed to cut my thumb quite deep, on my new scalpel blade. Typical as I'm running out of time! Didn't help the speed of the rest of the project either, cos it wouldn't stop bleeding...

Thankfully maintaining the full use of the thumb on my right hand, I could continue along the same lines (design wise). So the next day I was able to progress and eventually managed to finish my painting. I then scanned it in and added some type that I thought fitted well. It's not my own type, I got it from a free font website and am allowed to post it on here... Hope that you like the final design :)

I was very pleased with it, although tweaks could still be made. I also managed to enter it into the Puffin Design Award, after all the chaos, but I'll post relating to that soon...

Thanks for reading this mammoth post! x

High Fidelity

With three book covers to design, my second choice was High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (a good read if your interested). A story about love and a love of music and mix-tapes. There is also a film adaptation which has Jack Black in it (who I love), which I also recommend...Getting back to the artwork though, after thumbnailing my ideas, the best turned out to be the most simple! Just using 5 cassettes, to complement the repetition of  'top 5s' throughout the book. Here are a few experiments with music related material, prior to my design idea: 

After enjoying using materials physically to create an image, I decided that I wanted the final outcome to be a form of collage, or collagraph from which I could print. So from this I created my final piece by individually crafting my own cassette tapes. I used the collages as they were colourful and eye-catching on the front cover.  Although I would have liked to have the time to print these and observe the results, as it may have improved my final outcome. Oh well, easy to say with hindsight...(if I plan my time better in the future, this may be less of a problem). Anyway here is the final cover and I am happy with it, but improvements could be made.

Thanks for reading x

Back to Barcelona and Book covers!

I seem to have skipped past the book cover project that I completed... But I wanted to share the research I gained in the latest module and to maintain my posting to the blog. Following my Sagrada Familia woodcut, produced in the earlier stages of the book cover project, I came up with various ideas for my book cover, based on the book A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona by Le Cool (mainly because the title appealed to me). In the end I settled for an idea based around a tourist style postcard, with a painted   city view on the front and the reverse with a postage stamp and handwritten blurb. Here is the development of my painting.

Initially I started to paint with famous landmarks enlarged amongst the city buildings, but decided that it was too busy and drew the attention away from the areas I wanted to highlight (a less obvious and cliche postcard view of the city). Here I started to build up the mosaic effect, using rubber stamps I had made to  give the impression of the work of Gaudi, in Parc Guell.

Below is the painting close to completion, with much of the painstaking mosaic pattern completed. . .

I think the time spent on the mosaic pattern was definitely worth it and the results are better than I expected I could achieve, which is great, pretty happy with my first attempt at rubber stamping.

Thanks for reading x