If I were in the UK, I would have submitted this. Unfortunately, I'm not, so into the portfolio it goes. We had a choice of three titles: a children's fiction, an adult fiction, and a non-fiction. I chose the non-fiction, Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty.
I was able to obtain a copy of the book, and I read the first 50 or so pages. It was intriguing, and you really get a look into the author's world. McAnulty is autistic, and to him, nature provides a comforting escape from the modern world and all its troubles.
At first I wanted to illustrate the cover in the style of a woodcut print, something quite common in the Medieval period. There are a lot of parts of the book where McAnulty talks about the folklore related to the natural world, and I thought the style would be appropriate for that. I remembered a book I had, a compilation of the Grimm Brothers' Fairytales, which used these woodcut-style illustrations.
However, my lecturer pointed out that the tone of the book, one that I had already mentioned, was more akin to the Romantic era than the Medieval. I also only found out recently that the Brothers Grimm lived in the Romantic era anyway, so I was already wrong in the first place. It was a good decision to change the art direction.
I took the works of an Irish Romantic painter, Francis Danby, and used it to inform my artwork. It was important to me that I found an Irish painter, because the author of the book is Irish, and when talking about the natural world, a connection between people and place is always important. There is also something to be said about nationalism, but that's not for me to say.
I took one of the scenes in the book, where the author was observing some whooping swans, and used it as the cover. I don't know if this was exactly what happened (probably not) but I wanted to show the connection McAnulty had with nature.
I had a few options for the choice of type and their placement, but I finally settled on this. I used a combination of serif and sans-serif, but they both have a rough, naturalistic look. I almost placed the title in the upper third of the cover, in the centre. That felt a little basic, though, and I ended up placing it in the bottom left. Aside from framing the artwork, it also showcases the isolation that the author feels, which he actually loves. He finds that it is easier to think and learn when he isn't distracted by the sensory overload of a classroom setting.
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