Category Archives: Reading and Literacy

Designing the cover for my new children’s book – Generation Moon

It’s time to think about the cover design for my new middle-grade space adventure trilogy – Generation Moon.

This is a first go at it to see what happens. Often, a first attempt looks terrible, so you try everything else. But, eventually, you tend to come back to the first idea.

In this video I show you how I adapt sketches to fit the idea and then begin to manipulate them in photoshop.

Of course, I completely changed my mind and started all over again, but you’ll have to see the next video for that!

Creating a Landscape Illustration for Children’s Books – The international Space School – Redesign

Following on from last videos version of my fantasy landscape for the International Space school in my upcoming books “GENERATION MOON” this is a completely revised design.

I went right back to my initial vision and simplified it, having decided that I could use a big, wide landscape on the title page that would provide the setting for the majority of the book right from the start. Also, there might not be a suitable double page to get it all in later on. Two birds with one stone.

I am much happier with this now, and can get on with the cover design now – see the next post!

How to Draw Fantasy Landscape illustrations for Children’s Books – workbook sketches

By now you will know that I’m creating a space adventure trilogy for 8-12 year olds.

The action takes place at the International Space School, which I have set in a green and mountainous area of Wales – one of the countries that makes up the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

I’ll need an illustration of the school for the book but I also need it for myself to really get a feel for the place. It is a fantasy landscape, but based on experience – places I’ve been and lived in.

They say that abstract, concept art is finished when it most closely resembles the idea the artist first had. So it is with illustrating a scene from a story you have written yourself.

Towards the end of the painting, I realised I’d become a bit obsessed with certain aspects of the drawing and had not really got the whole thing to come together. I made the smaller buildings quite eco – with sedum/turf roofs, but that makes it look too 20th century.

I think it needs to be more contemporary, so I need to go back and do more research. You don’t know these things unless you do them! I’ll come back with another version when I’ve done it and am happy.

This is probably the biggest illustration in the book and needs to be got right. I think it needs to go twice as wide – a big wide landscape – so it fits across the bottom of a page – maybe even across the preliminary pages – in fact hold that thought!