Been concentrating on some of the less exciting aspects of preparing and beginning a career out of this, planning, financials…so felt like I’d lost my mojo a bit these last few weeks despite seemingly feeding myself with a fair slice of ‘inspiration’.  Maybe I over-egged it (a bad bake).  Anyway…

Giving myself a new project with some focus – to create a series of covers for Daphne Du Maurier, as my favourite author, and having read the majority of her books I feel like there is an atmosphere I understand.  Hopefully!  Some of the illustrations for ‘The Blue Lenses’ are on my portfolio website and I think her short stories are especially brilliant.  Not an revolutionary view there.

The Scapegoat is a great and rather terrifying story (if you suspend your disbelief, it’s like watching particular films in that way) about doppelgangers.  I was looking through my book of Piero della Francesca and there was a fresco he had done quickly using two angels holding open curtains to reveal the Madonna.  He had used the same cartoon for each figure, but switched the colours so one angel had red shoes and a green gown, the other in reverse.  Love it!

So I used a tracing for both figures and flipped it but doing it quickly in my sketchbook they don’t look perfectly alike which I kind of was looking for, but I’m not sure whether I mind.  As I was doing it I remembered one of the main characters runs a glassworks, so the whole segmented stained-glass thing works.

Finding it interesting doing this, and considering what it was I took from the stories, as some I haven’t read for a while.   And whether I need to re-read them?  I remember reading that Hitchcock read The Birds once, then practically threw it away to reinvent it in his own inimitable way.  Although lets face it that’s not really an accurate comparision!!!

I’m no graphic designer so the text placement probably isn’t the most imaginative but there’s something I like about the simplicity of it and the fact it looks slightly dated.  It’s a lovely font (despite the name) called CaligulaA.  Need to think about how a series would work.

Happy for a couple of hours work….!