Final Outcome

My final outcome, I worked really hard on the background to get richer colours and a better texture,

I also worked on the characters some more, giving them a slightly larger than real life appeal, just so they

aren't too small on the cover like last time.

I've taken the advise to use masking fluid, it creates a nice texture and flows well,
my main criticism however is I've not added the willow leaves, I thought it would be too jumbled,
before submitting the artwork I might try to add them to see how that variation would fare, I've tried to use a limited colours pallette minus the colours of the animals, and I've worked on the text more making it clearer, I am pleased with my outcome.

What it will look like once cropped, I measured out the exact measurements before even starting the image, and made a digital version measuring it out but for some reason the image still look a bit odd! I did want to create a larger border on the top and bottom, but would've liked a slightly larger border on the edges so the blue doesn't look almost clipped, that will be something I will look at before submitting my work.

Research

Various front covers, they mainly consisted of traditional watercolours and picnic/boat scene,

but I loved the simplistic colour palette of the top left picture...

I then found this artist, he had similar colour palettes to the cover I liked, I want to try and incorporate his style/colours in my work, but I want to use watercolours

Initial getting used to working with paints again, and thumbnail sketches of book cover ideas

Background ideas, keep the colour palette simple

Finer details of what's in the picture

Character Development/Design, still using watercolours, didn't want to make them too humanistic, the fact they're not wearing clothes makes it look 'charming'.

Ideas and type development

First outcome, nice, but quite blanched out colours, the black line is too bold around the willow branches

try and tone that down a bit, possibly use masking fluid, work on text, and possibly the characters some more.

My Latex Design for a Competition

Only brief was that it had to be valentine oriented, so I created this piece, high waisted  pants with frills and suspender loops and feature hearts, a shaped heart top/bra top with a halterneck complete with gauntlets and heart shaped pasties [=

results 14th feb!