Adventurous Youngsters: Part 1

I'd really like to get involved with some YA fantasy book-cover work. I always felt that my color palettes were appropriate, and that my interest in the fantasy genre was evident. So what gives!? Oh, right, I need to draw 'Young Adults'. A little while back I reached out and got people's suggestions on good YA fantasy books (still open, BTW, just list 'em off in the comments of this post). My aim was to find some solid YA books that I could create illustrations for, and thus broaden my portfolio's horizons a bit.

I plan to alternate between illustrations that depict already-published stories, and illustrations that expand my own personal sandbox/world and aesthetic.

This first value-rough is for one of the personal pieces. I'm making an effort to have elements in this image overlap and not be too secular. My friend and former coworker Jeremy once made a good observation on an earlier piece of mine that each of the elements were very separate from everything else. I'm making an effort to push this overlap and interplay in my work until it becomes second-nature. That's really how I make any kind of progress: I work at it until it becomes a reflex.


And below are some thumbnails and outfit sketches for a Sabriel illustration. Sabriel is the title character in the book by Garth Nix.

If you're a fan of Sabriel, you should check out the work my other friend and former coworker Kali has been doing for the Picture Book Report. I was a little hesitant to get rolling on this piece for fear of simply being outclassed in the Sabriel category. But hey, its a fun book, and the more art the merrier.

I'm going to try and post my progress on this project every month, but I'm not making any promises as to how often this will produce a finished illustration. Work gets hectic, man. You know what I'm sayin'.