Penguins

Some roughs for obscure Penguin titles - above, cover design for 'How Green Were the Nazis?', with meschersmitts over mountains, only with the recycling symbol replacing the propellers, and below a promotional poster for the same book with Hitler as the 'Keep Britain Tidy' chappy, or the 'International Tidy Man' as I've learnt his proper name is. I really wanted to use a nazi foot solider or something similar instead of Hitler, but the complete deficit of any type of nazi at all, stiking their arm out in the correct manner (not necessarily performing a hitler salute) on the web, in a size translatable to be worked on in Photoshop, is completely amazing. Really, barely anything at all. I spent many a long hour looking, goddamit. Also, a tip - don't go perusing nazi themed stuff on google with your 'safe search' turned fully off. Bruised retinas all round. Didn't find what I needed, did however unwittingly find such delights as executionstoday!.com and the like. Images from which are now branded onto my eyes with scolding pokers of woeful evilness. (Altho no worse than any of the images I've seen in the various atrocity spots I've visited in Rwanda, Vietnam, Cambodia and Germany. But there's an element of unwelcome surprise to seeing that stuff when you're sat at home doing scribbling research)

Anyhow, the brief stated that one of these images should be photographic in basis, which is why they are a little different from my usual stuff. Quite pleased with the top image though, a little less so with Hitler, but he's alright.

Below - rough for 'The Joy of Sex', using the sexy lady previously posted a while ago. For the purposes of dignity and commerial viability, the 'real' book cover comes with a round magnet attached, covering her up a bit. It has the word 'Play' on it. Notice the play with the gender symbols in this one. Below that, the peeping-tom-man who also stars alongside sexy lady on the cover, just because he's not been here before, and the sexy lady again so you can see them both together. There's also a counterpart to sexy lady of a man in a similar pose, and similar jester style get up, who I'm thinking will be in that far left circle instead of peeping tom. Who will appear on the inside right flap of the cover, only flipped so he's still looking at the jester lady - and a countering peeping lady (thomasina?) inside the left flap. Or I might subvert expectations and flip 'em round.

There's a third cover design for the title 'Bombproof Your Horse' which I'm just finishing off and will post later on - the basis of which is the tank picture in the previous post. I'm going to print each of these onto white book cloth and bind them to hardback books; I'll post pics of the finished things once they're ready.

I feel like I'm beginning to get somewhere with my work lately - although I have a nasty feeling some of it is looking way too photoshopped, even tho its all hand rendered in origin. I want to get back a rougher, more textural, more hand made approach I think.. so next up is a personal project on war and wilderness doing just that.

Tank

I drew a tank. I may not draw another one for some time (bleedin thing kept morphing into a more complex thing every time I looked up. It took a a while and many coffees/smoke breaks. Still, interesting to draw new stuff.). Rough for new book cover - this image still only in the planning stages and will have more elements added to it later on today.

The Joy of Sex

Slightly risque rough for a new book cover design project. Only brainstorming really, will flesh it out properly later but thought I'd post it up anyhow.

Sketchbook stuff

Did you know that the russian word for light blue - голубой - can also be used to mean 'homosexual'? Nope, nor did I.