Final project for the Domestika course “Book Cover Design: Illustrate Stories with Evocative Images” taught by Owen Gent. We had to paint a jacket illustration for a book of our choice, then complete the jacket design. I chose the classic narrative poem The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar, with the fictional Erika Mustermann acting as translator for this edition (she’s actually a placeholder character used in samples of German legal documents like driver’s licenses and passports).

 

Owen Gent’s style is gorgeous; he’s a true master. This is really my first time using watercolour in any meaningful capacity, and only digitally at that. I had a few other designs for other books, which I might return to as an exercise at some point once I’m more comfortable with these techniques. There’s lots of room to grow. I’m still exploring style and technique, but I would love to incorporate some of this painterly style in eventual animation work.