How to illustrate A BOOK COVER: The white Tiger
Hello artists! Here’s yet another step-by-step process on how I decided to approach a new illustration challenge : illustrating the cover of the book The White Tiger by Indian author Aravind Adiga.to add variety to my illustration portfolio. The White Tiger is a novel published in 2008 and which won the 40th Booker Prize the same year.
I really enjoyed the book and the movie, it gives you a perspective of how corruption, betrayal, and inequality crash all together. The book uses the author’s voice and takes you on a dark and grim tale of self development. The movie also uses dark comedy and the cast is outstanding. It helps visually to see the enormous difference in “casts” by outlining the extreme poverty and the extreme wealth that can be found in India.
RESEARCH the book before doing any illustration
First of all, you read the book, or watch the movie (with the same name by director Rami Bahrami) + read the book.
The story is about Balram Halwai and his impressive and enormous ascent from absolute poverty in a small village to a successful businessman. Both the movie and the book have this first person narration. The movie did a great job on showing us the best parts of the book, but of course it is hard to fit all the book in a two hour movie. I would recommend you to do both, read it and watch it.
A few notes from both:
The white tiger is such a strong name, the meaning behind it all is, that it is almost like a mythological creature, when a white tiger is born.
The chicken coop was another very useful imagery, to describe where most people are, they are stuck in fear, trapped, but also used to it, and do not break free from their limited, constrained,
SKETCH IDEAS for the cover
I sketched some ideas, the white tiger had to be there of course, I was trying to get something fierce, but sneaky, and also friendly.
First I tried something like this, the tiger sitting on the chicken coop.
I think the image was simple, and effective, but too static.
The next thing I tried was the Tiger walking towards us, the viewer, the reader. Exciting! And I kept the chicken coop and added some plants around.
The White tiger final book cover design sketch
DRAW A CLEAN SKETCH
Instead of drawing it all again, I rolled with my soft eraser over the drawing to remove the hard lines, so I could paint over it without the pencil smudging over the paint.
Art tip: Use a Kneadable eraser to roll over your drawing to remove hard lines
You can always put a paper on top of your sketches and use something like my HUION LS4 Light table and get a very crisp clean base drawing.
This time I didn’t use my lead holders made by Koh-i-noor, but I just used my new mechanical pencil , a Japanese brand which makes the lead turning and never ending! quite the technology if you ask me!
This is the book cover sketch after cleaning it up with the kneaded eraser :), you can see all the strong lines are softened.
PAINTING EXPLORATION
My favourite part of this type of works is painting! Testing colors, checking how to make the best combination. I did a few small thumbnails, just to put some colors and create some harmonies. What a joy!
Of course, the Tiger had to be white, I played around with the colors for this chickens, then the plants not much game there. But the background, yes, that gave me different options to play with.
From these color combinations, which one do you like best? Do you think I made the right choice at the end?
After playing around here and there, I went for this color palette, and here are a few of the early stages.
Kiyary book cover design for white tiger novel
Adding the Titlle of the book
For the tittle I wanted something clear, I played with the W as a scratch made by a tiger, but then I found out it was a bit too much with the design, so I kept it simple.
Added the author’s name in a free style font, and that is all.
For cover designs unfortunately the illustrator doesn’t get to put his/her name on the front (sometimes it goes right inside de book); but for copyright purposes in this case I added a little watermark on the cover :) with my name, for course, this little thing would be out on the final cover, I know it doesn’t stop someone from stealing the drawing, but at least complicates things, plus if I wanted to pursue legal matters if the image is used without my consent, I can prove this is mine as I have all the physical originals plus the digital files with date stamp. Keep; your artwork safe guys!
FINAL RESULT of the illustrated book cover
et Voila!
What do you think of the whole process and the result? As always, when doing these projects, I had tons of fun, and learnt new things. Thank you for reading this post and I hope you got something interesting too :) , let me know what you think on the comments or send me a message on my socials!
If you want to know more, and see behind the scenes, don’t forget to subscribe or follow me on Instagram @kiyary , I post daily and share short reels with my work in progress too.
Now my friends, go out, explore and happy painting! 🎨
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Disclosure: Some of the links used on this post are Amazon affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. All the opinions are my own, I only recommend what I have really tested and used.
