The three book I chose were Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Homebody by Rupi Kaur. These are all poetry books with very minimalistic covers and line work illustrations within the book. They all have very heavy content regarding self acceptance and healing through trauma, and each piece has raw beauty hidden within the pages. 

The Ask

I was tasked with creating a new book covers in my own style that still represented the books well. 

The Approach 

Since the covers and illustrations within are very minimal and consist of mostly line work illustrations, I decided to try to mimic that within each cover. However, I felt that the original covers lacked a bit of whimsical artistic quality that the poems inside convey, so I chose to include fluid, watercolor-like strokes as well. I think this combination of dainty, minimal. line work and large, organic shapes moving across the cover really creates a visual symphony that evokes raw emotions, just like the poems within. 

I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do with these covers. The first iterations of the process are very similar to the end pieces, as I only had to do very minimal refinement such as the placement of text or the angle of the watercolor strokes. I hand drew each line work illustration in Adobe Illustrator. 

Each book keeps the respective color palette to their original books. The line work bee on the milk and honey cover is almost exactly the same bee as on the original cover, but the wave of white (milk) and the small golden yellow stream (honey) are both completely new. Each of the other two covers are completely redesigned, only keeping the color palette and name.