the Hound of the Baskervilles – A Cover
I have a particular love for cover art. I love seeing all the new styles that have come into fashion over the past few years. There is quite a bit of variety in these styles, but moste prevalent seems to be a more illustrative, colorful styles that I personally love. To me it seems like a natural evolution of the classic speculative novel cover, with imaginative picutres that give you a window into what the book may contain. I have always wanted to take a shot at doing cover art, and thought that this project would be an excellent one to start on. (see more details about the process below.)
As a side note, and mainly because these is my own pet peeve, I have seen a lot of discourse about these stylistic covers that seem to take issue with the fact that these styles have gained popularity in more mature genres, namely romance. While I don’t really feel I have a good argument to make in regards to romance as a genre and the role of cover art in it’s presentation, it has been very annoying to see people label this style, which is very similar to my own, as ‘for children.’ I am a children’s illustrator, and I can admit my style adapts very nicely into children’s media. Many of my own works, like Rainy Castle, have a childish whimsy to them. However, I take issue with the assumption that a specific style can only be for one purpose, and has to be limited to that purpose. I have drawn boobies! I also have many pieces that contain more mature themes and subjects. I chafe at the idea that what I should or shouldn’t be drawing ought to be dictated by what people imagine my style of art is for. Obviously, it’s silly to assume people’s full intentions by so narrow a metric as style.
I personally like to draw in this way for a variety of reasons. When I think about what it is I want to capture in a piece of art, this style is just naturally the language I want to use to do it. It’s a bit cartoony, sure, but it is also colorful and interpretive. I like this style because it centers the imaginative and can evoke a sense of whimsy. My art, I think, is fairly dripping in whimsy. I think there is a somewhat wrongheaded belief in our culture that for something to be ‘for adults,’ or to be considered mature, it has to be serious, grounded, and realistic. While I do admit my style is whimsical, and will therefore always influence how the themes in my art are interpreted or seen, I think it is silly to then assume my choice of subject matter be therefore limited to that effect.
As I create I explore the world. That’s what it means to me to be an artist. As I make art, I imagine the people looking at it, what they might feel, or think. I don’t fully know why I am drawn to expression through this whimsical lens, but I do know that I deeply believe whimsy and imagination is good for people. It’s good for me, and I think adults need it as much as kids do.
Starting out with this project, my first idea was to create a dust cover that I could sell at my upcoming art booth in October. The way I saw it, lots of people were sure to have a copy of this, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most popular work of fiction, and having a fancy unique dust cover for it seemed like a really fun idea. I certainly wanted one. These are my sketch ideas, I had a pretty strong idea for what I wanted right from the get go.
Unfortunately, there were some real flaws with my plan. For one, and probably the biggest one, books printed in the US don’t come in standard sizes. I had no idea how to make a dust cover that would reliably fit the varied sizes of books people were likely to have. And, for two, most people usually own bound collections of Sherlock Holmes, not individual copies of the Hound of the Baskervilles in particular. My dust cover idea was dead before it really even got going.
The cover art, however, was still a go. I needed practice so I could get hired to do more of these in the future, and also once I had a sketch I was really excited about what the final image would look like. I may still upload my cover to Lulu for people to buy a pocket-sized version of the Hound of the Baskervilles, just for the satisfaction of seeing this on a real book, but overall I am more than happy with how this turned out. For now, I plan to sell it at my booth as a poster, and I think it will look fantastic on someone’s wall. 😀
