When I was returning to university to finish my degree I was asked to complete a pre-course project over the holidays before it started. We were asked to do a cover and a series of spot illustrations for a book of our choosing.
I knew I didn’t want to do a graphic novel as that would have been a little bit too obvious for me they have plenty of imagery of their own already. I had always heard of people my age having to read Lord of the Flies in school when they were younger but I was never made to during my time there so I decided to go back and read it around this time.
I was told by so many people that I would hate it but I think school must have had a bad effect on them because I absolutely loved it. It definitely gave me plenty of ideas to draw from.
With my love of drawing bloody horror scenes the Lord of the Flies himself was an obvious choice for the cover image (although ill leave it up to you to decided if that would ever actually get picked for a children’s novel cover) but I was pretty excited to draw the conch. As simple as it was I hadn’t ever drawn one, at least not in this style. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Those of you who picked up my last book ‘Ghosts’ will recognise these as the sketches for them were included there. That book itself was a project for the University course.