Recently I was hired (!) to draw the cover for the magazine ‘The young Galileo’. This is a monthly magazine for children about science, technology, computers and nature.
Take a look here at some of their awesome covers over the last few years:
The Brief
The main topic for the cover illustration that they ordered from me was about the ‘Book Week’ festival, a yearly nation-wide event promoting reading across all ages. Other topics for that month’s issue included:
- -How to write a book?
- -Guinness Book of World Records
- -The re-issue of the book ‘The Never-ending story’
- -A brief history of Printing
I was told to use 2 or more topics in order to compose the illustration, understanding of course that the main topic must be the ‘Book Week’ Festival.
The Work
I started to work promptly after receiving the brief and started to think about how reading makes you feel, how a story echoes in your mind, how characters come to life. As a girl that used to borrow books from the library on a regular basis and dive into new adventures that topic struck a very familiar chord!
The inspiration came therefore very easily. I decided to draw a girl sitting in her room reading a book and characters or objects from the ‘Never-ending Story’ or the Guinness Book would take life all around her.
Here below, see the black and white version of the 1st sketch:
I added a small monster hidden below the armchair as a small homage to the unforgettable children’s book: ‘There’s a Nightmare in my Closet’…
After the draft was accepted – to my utter delight – I colored it thanks to my friend Photoshop.
For the last version, as you saw above, I added the sleeping dog which felt like a nice element to add around the main character:
Book Festival Little Dog
Eventually I received a copy of that issue the following month and here is what it looked like:
This was one of the best professional experience of my life and I hope to continue forward and get many more chances to draw for magazines or books… Maybe another cover for Galileo soon? Time will tell…