Book Week 2015 Cover For “The Young Galileo”

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:

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…

NEW !End of Year 2016 Cover For “The Young Galileo”