If I could illustrate any book cover...

**  I'm reposting this blog today, due to the upsetting news that Harper Lee has died **

Earlier this year Diane Luger at Grand Central Publishing asked me to illustrate a cover for the 50th anniversary edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, one of my favourite books ever.

Leaving aside the nerves at taking on such a responsibility, this meant an immediate phone call to my friend Jules who is also a life-long fan and who can still, years after our O levels ended, quote whole sections of the book. She lent me the DVD of the film and had on standby her copy of the book and, together with my friend Drew, provided ideas and thoughts and, later in the process, very objective feedback on what I was putting together, helping keep some of the 'less confident' ideas from the art directors' eyes!

For me the most poignant moments are those when the feared Boo Radley leaves his little gifts for Scout and Jem hidden in the tree, especially the tiny figurines of the children. That needed to be central to the image and in the end, it literally does form 'the spine' of the book. The other elements were Scout's tomboy clothing and the trees (forming play areas and hiding places), and, since I've been working with silhouettes a lot recently, a nod to the work of American artist Kara Walker, whose work frames themes relevant to the book such as race, history, narrative, power and shame.

Ink drawings of Scout and Jem:


An early sketched cover idea:
To my relief the end result was approved of by both Jules and Drew, art director and author. I get quite excited when I think about Harper Lee's eyes on my artwork. Not known for her sociability, it is rumoured she keeps a very low profile in the town of Monroeville where she lives, and where Mockingbird is alleged to have been set. But it seems she liked it. In an enlightening coincidence, a recent BBC documentary on the 50th anniversary of the book led the presenter to Morris Dees, founder of The Southern Poverty Law Centre in Alabama, also a client, and one I'm proud to work for. You can read his narrative on 'What To Kill A Mockingbird Means To Me'.

'The small-town life that Harper Lee wrote about in Mockingbird may be fading away, but many of the attitudes about race live on. Just as importantly, the deep, underlying structures of racism in our country have not been eliminated. On the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s classic, we must dedicate ourselves to the work that remains to be done.'


Now, the OTHER one I'd love to do is Wuthering Heights, but for I'll have to wait until 2047 for the next anniversary...

Links:

About the book.
Harper Lee.
Southern Poverty Law Centre.
Buy a copy of the book (US only, sorry).

Go Set A Watchman

I am really delighted to be able to share my cover for Harper Lee's new novel, 'Go Set A Watchman', published worldwide on Tuesday 14th July.

When I illustrated the cover for the 50th Anniversary Edition of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' in 2010 (published 2010 - my blog on that written five years to the day of Watchman's publication), I like the rest of the world did not foresee a second novel from its author, so when news of its discovery, I was beside myself with excitement and secretly hurled out cosmic wishes to be given a chance at its cover.

I'd predicted that having done 'the' existing Harper Lee cover, I'd be out of the running, but it's strange how things turn out. The Heinemann/Random House UK and US covers were both done in-house - you will thus find only two versions of the cover online - but one independent publisher asked me to create an illustration for their hardcover edition, Open Books, in Korea.

A publisher of beautiful, high production value contemporary European and American books and novels, these fellas built their own Guggenheim-like office HQ and Museum in Paju Book City (such a place exists) to house their Mimesis imprint of art, illustration, architecture and photography books, and had a backlist of stylish and carefully designed books. 

Suitably impressed by their reputation, and the fact they'd been granted a license to publish the novel, we had an incredibly short space of time in which to do it, and no...I wasn't allowed to read it! With a global embargo on the manuscript except for a handful of people deep inside the publishing houses, I had to set to work with a keen but firm art director, Gregory, and only a couple of elements of the storyline.

I began with frantic sketching out of ideas, since I had quite a few and wanted to get them all out on paper. Since I have a habit of sending the client too many choices, I felt a bit bad hitting Gregory up with nine choices from the outset:

The other bit of the story I did know was that Scut, now Jean-Louise (her real name), has travelled home from New York to meet her father, Atticus, to find a change in both him and his outlook; a change in hers is also hinted at. In the middle of the civil rights movement in the small southern American town she grew up in, she is forced to grapple with political and personal issues as she tries to understand her father's attitude to society.

Since this book was to be published as a pair with a fresh edition of To Kill A Mockingbird, the brief was to create something which was connected, but visually distinct, so the silhouettes of the Mockingbird cover were to feature. I set about trying to capture both people having that meeting:

I started drawing Atticus in earnest, too - trying not to get too focussed on the beautiful Gregory Peck version forever engraved into memory:

Clothing references were careful, with the book being set in the 1950s - I also thought about what I knew about the young Scout, now twenty years older and 'Jean-Louise' - would she really be into dresses, skirts? How could I make it clear that the grown-up Scout (that bit I did know of the story) was a Woman now, and living in what were still very conservative times?

A version was picked out after working up three of my ideas to almost-print standard, then developed tightly. I was aiming to communicate the notion of a meeting of strong minds, of two adults with differing views, and the tension of one waiting for the other's arrival - the fence being a clear suggester of division but also of 'letting in' and changing attitudes to segregation. I made many hand-painted backgrounds, suggesting night-time and scorched earth, even one hinting at the stars and stripes, before settling on the dark blue.

Of course Jean-Louise is walking back into her childhood home, so memories of her 6-year-old self would be waiting inside the gate as she came in - here she is in a rough ink sketch holding her flower from Mockingbird, before turning her into Jean-Louise's shadow:

The cover was honed and refined with Korean type and an English subtitle added, together with the author's name in Korean. I think the Korean characters look beautiful - and they were sensitively given the same treatment on the Open Books edition of Mockingbird too:

Both can be bought from Open Books website, but I've ordered myself a UK edition - I'm working away the day it comes out so I've had it delivered on location, because honestly, I can't wait!

It was a challenging process, but possibly the best job ever, for many reasons: a monumental book, a hard brief, a great art director, and an impressive publishing house.

More on the book itself, and the UK/US covers:

Open Books

Open Books' charming Watchman-dedicated Facebook page

My blog about To Kill A Mockingbird

NY Times US cover review

Guardian UK cover review

To Stitch A Mockingbird.

While hunting around online recently after someone alerted to me to prints of my Mockingbird cover being sold ‘elsewhere’, I found this.

Kristin H aka Sewtechnicolour is a US-based needlesmith, and she had stitched a version of my cover! How could I not get in touch with her? On bouncing around her blog a bit it became apparent we both share a love of books and book covers - her blog is littered with them along with myriad creations in beautiful fabrics and yarns. She picks covers she likes and uses its colours to inspire a new piece of work - nice - and in fact her first blog of 2014 is her list of ‘most-anticipated books’, together with a patchwork of their covers. She writes well too.

Oh and she loves British TV series - I really think we should be friends! In real life our chances are slim, for now I’m happy to make her acquaintance online!

Here’s what she did with my cover. How nice to be ‘re-interpreted’ again!

And, you must go to her blog!
http://missvintagegirl.blogspot.co.uk