Creating a Cover

When I began this blog, I wrote that I'd be posting more sketches and work-in-progress stuff, and so far I really haven't been doing that much. In attempt to change that, here's the step-by-step process of how a recent magazine cover assignment went down:

The cover was for an issue with various Christmas-themed articles, so for my initial sketch I went with a classic--if somewhat generic--holiday image. While the client liked the feel of it, they decided they wanted something a little more focused on gift-giving.

Sketch #2 focused more on the gift...but the client wanted something even more overtly about the gift, and less overtly Christmas-y.

Sketch #3 was the winner. I managed to avoid the more obvious trapping of Christmas (the tree, stockings, etc.) while still making it clear that it wasn't simply a birthday by keeping the boy in his pyjamas. With this sketch, I finally had an approval to move on to the final art.

As always, I enlarged the approved sketch, tightened it up significantly, and inked it.

Then, it's onto the scanner and into Photoshop for colour and effects. One more assignment down!