Book cover showing shadowy figures watching from a moonlit treeline
Work

Cover and interior illustration for a poetry book about cryptids and mythological creatures.

Client

Richard Stevenson (author)

Sector

Publishing

Year

April 2023

Scope

Cover illustration, interior illustration

The problem

A poetry book about cryptids and mythological creatures. The creatures had to be frightening and funny at the same time, and there were a lot of them.

The approach

Every creature was drawn by hand first, then finished digitally. The real job was holding a whole cast of characters in one consistent style across the entire book, which is harder than holding one character.

The system

Dark Watchers

Interior illustration process

Every creature drawn by hand, then inked and shaded in one style

01 The hidden watcher

Pencil sketch → painted into the front cover

02 Crocodingo

Finished interior: ink and grey tones

03 Bigfoot hits the road

Inks and flat tones → rendered shading and background

04 Bigfoot babysits

Inks and flat tones → rendered shading and background

Poems by Richard Stevenson · Purple Unicorn Media, 2023

Illustrated by Nigel Jordan

Interior process: a pencil sketch painted into the cover, and inks to rendered shading on the bigfoot pages.
Large shaggy creature in a cap standing among mushrooms in a dim forest
The Argopelter. Line work built heavy enough to survive being printed small.
Wide-eyed grinning creature crouched beside a brick wall lit by flames
The Naine Rouge. One style holding across a whole cast is the hard part.
Grey-toned illustration of a boy on a beach throwing a pizza to the Ogopogo lake serpent, with a bridge behind them
Timelapse of the Ogopogo illustration going from line drawing to finished grey tones
The Ogopogo, with the timelapse beside it: line drawing, reference, then the washes and shading.

In application

  • Cover, painted digitally and pitched at campfire storytelling rather than horror.

  • The full wrap as printed, back, spine and front, with the layout and bios set around the painting.

Result

Published by Purple Unicorn Media in 2023 and still available on Amazon. Richard Stevenson's collection runs through cryptids, fearsome critters and urban legends, quirky in one poem and genuinely dark in the next, so the cover and interior work had to hold humour and menace at the same time without tipping into either one. Richard passed away not long after release. This is among the last books published in his lifetime.

Need a launch cut or a sound to go with it? That gets built here too. The sound

Next project

Twelve months inside the Creature world.

Read the case study