Fake it til you make it

I love middle grade and young adult novels. They are FUN, and I love finding new ones and sharing with my step-kids. (We don’t always have the same tastes, but there’s a lot of overlap.) So I’m starting a new personal project of FAKE BOOK COVERS! It’s something to put out there and let the universe know that I want to illustrate these. I’ve brainstormed a lot of ideas so far, but I’m always open to suggestions. Here’s the first one:

I imagine this fake book The Witch and The Four Wishes must be a suspenseful and magical adventure. What’s that glowing orb? How does the mysterious and ornate book fit in? Will the kids be ok? Is the red-head going to mouth off to the witch? What’s up with that lizard?

I started with rough thumbnail sketches, to get the composition figured out, and continued with a slightly tighter pencil sketch to flesh out the characters.

I scanned in the pencil sketches and moved them into Procreate on the ipad, and took it from there. Here are a few details:

And then I thought it needed a black and white fake interior illustration to go along with it. And our young heroine experimenting with magic seemed like a good choice.

Ok, on to the next fake book cover… stay tuned!