My book comes out tomorrow (!!!), and I thought I’d give a little behind the scenes peek at the cover for A Green Place to Be.
The cover began with a series of tiny thumbnail sketches. I like to work small at this stage (at or around postage stamp size), and will often try to churn out 8-10+ ideas before honing in on a smaller number. For this cover I printed out a blank cover template and went to town sketching directly on that. You can see the first little version of what would become the final cover in the upper left section of the page.
After refining some of these and sharing them with my art director, Amy, we decided that one or two of them were promising, but that I should try just a few more options. We had a phone call, and I did a bit of sketching on the back of an envelope. It’s not glamorous, but I often prefer my sketches when I’m not too precious about the materials. It frees me up to try new things, loosen up, and get a bit messy. The envelope sketches may not look like much, but this part of a project is always really exciting.
Each piece that I do is a back-and-forth process between traditional and digital materials. Sketches usually begin with pen or pencil, then are revised digitally, before the final art is made traditionally, and then revised digitally again. For this project I splurged on a Cintiq, which was such a time saver for sketching, hand lettering, and the final edits. You can see an alternate little shovel-toting Frederick Law Olmsted being sketched on my trusty Cintiq.
I revised the ideas that Amy and I discussed on the phone into digital grayscale final sketches that I sent back to my art director. We decided to go with the image of Calvert and Frederick in the Ramble for the front of the book, and the back of the book would be the image of Conservatory Waters. At the last minute I added some kids in front of the pool of water to make the back cover more engaging.
Thanks for looking! Check out A Green Place to Be at your local bookstore to see the full cover!
