What an honour it was to play a part in the part in the making of this special gift edition; it's a classic, timeless story. With Julia Sarda's 2014 full colour illustrations inside, the cloth-bound, die-cut cornflower blue cover is embossed with my framing illustration and handsome title in silver foil. It positively sparkles - which it wouldn't wouldn't it - it's 'spick and span'! Art direction was by a regular client, the energetic Phil at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who I previously worked with at Disney.
The work was created first in pencil then worked up in Mitsubishi's uniPin fineliners, in 3 widths. Once I'd thrashed out how fine and detailed this could or couldn't go (my first roughs were much too ornate) it was a simple job, with attention paid to line width and keeping the opposing sides a little different from each other, as I didn't want mirroring.
The somewhat ornery title was designed to look hand-crafted and imprecise, a little out of the ordinary and not too...pretty!
I'm fully intending to see the new film as I remember the original being a bit scary when I was little, and I want to squash those memories. The idea that two children weren't looked after by their own parents was scary and baffling in its own right, and Mary was just a bit..strange. As was Dick Van Dyke's London accent!
You can see little videos of the way the cover sparkles at inkstagram.ink
and you can get a copy of the book here
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