How to Design a Book cover: ALICE’s IN WONDERLAND BOOK
Who hasn’t read or watched “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland”? To add some YA portfolio pieces I decided to read the book -once more- and draw a few chapters from the book, and of course watch the several movies on the background while painting.
research The book and the story
The book Alice’s adventures in Wonderland is a 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll, who was actually a mathematics professor. Go figure!
Here’s a list of the Alice in Wonderland Movies I watched:
Alice in Wonderland 1951
Alice in Wonderland 2010
Alice through the Looking glass 2016
but there are so so many others! I cannot assure you they are good or bad, you will have to go and try them.
Alice in wonderland, alice in the garden of flowers
The chapter narrates how Alice walks through a garden, where she bumps into a bed of talking flowers: a border of daisies, a tiger lily, a rose, a rude violet, and a larkspur.
Sketch
So here is there sketch for this chapter where Alice meets the garden flowers:
Alice meeting the flowers in the garden, among roses, daisies, and others.
To check the color palette I wanted to use, I decided to take a photo of the sketch and test some color choices using Procreate.
As you can see, my coloring techniques using digital media were not the best haha, but at least I got a clear idea of where I am heading.
COLOR
The next thing, my favorite thing, to color! I used gouache and my trusty Raphael brushes, and went head on to color this image of Alice in Wonderland talking to the flowers.
This is the whole scene painted, which has to be cropped and adjusted. Notice I changed Alice’s dress, since it’s a Victorian type of dress, they are usually longer - ankle length.
You can notice I changed her mouth and added some contrast and shadows to frame Alice as the center piece.
I liked the image so much that I decided to turn it into the cover of the book. Added the title and the autor Lewis Carol :) I will continue working on the other chapters of Alice in Wonderland as I squeeze some free time; this first part was fun to work on and paint. I loved painting it.
Choosing a proper font for the cover was also fun ;) ! I use the website dafont.com to find cool fonts, always search for free or public-domain :)
So what do you think? I’m pretty happy with the result. Now let’s work on the next chapter!
Go out, explore and happy painting! 🎨
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